Random Thoughts: The Return

flowersofnight

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MissUMana wrote:
That's only because horse carriages are no longer allowed in NYC. ;)
I don't think they ever actually got around to banning those XD The mayor promised to do it when he was elected, but I think the lure of the tourist trap created too much resistance in city council or whatever.
 

PureElegance

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Madmoiselle_Silk wrote:
Actually, I was kind of surprised it was just me and one other guy who wore a suit, the rest wore jeans or other casual pants, with sneakers. I’d feel weird showing up like that…I mean I’m there to ask the Japanese state to fund my research, the least I could do is dress up XD
I also realized I rather enjoyed it. My conclusion: I need to get a job in which I have to wear a suit every day. OLã￾«ã￾ªã‚Šã￾Ÿã￾„ ::gaku::

And yes, I’m a graduate student, so I applied to get a scholarship to do a master’s degree in Japan.
Well, good for you for wearing a suit for an important interview! At least you take care of your appearance and you care~ The art of dressing up has gone to the way side. Or even simply dressing professionally is going to the wayside.

I wear a suit every day, along with heels, for my internship. ALWAYS HAVE ALWAYS WILL. I just love them on me and men, haha! I think these clothes are professional, especially for work and interviews. Plenty of people wear suits still, but I think it's more in certain industries rather than across every industry.

What's funny is that I've always had this getup, and the rest of the interns at every place I've been look so casual in comparison. Jennifer has started wearing heels now and more colorful attire and she said it's because of me XD

A lot of my classmates wear sweatpants or "I just rolled out of bed" clothing and I can't imagine wearing that to class. It's not as though I'm dressed like I'm going to the ball, but I make sure to wear a nice coordinate, nice jewelry, and put some thought into it. My parents are that way too, even if it's just going to the grocery store or to the gym.

Opera clothes need to come back though. *drool* I yearn for the days of top hats, canes, cream scarves, and capes.

@MissUMana: Horse carriages are not banned here XD It's one thing on my bucket list. But they're all over the place and I've always liked them. Around 2AM is when they go back to the stables. I would know as I live near one and I hear the horses going by my window on their way.

Robyn, one of the attorneys here, it's her last day! I'm going to miss her. She's so quick-witted, sharp, intelligent, nice, and funny. Man. *SNIFF*

Omg I'm applying for my dorm in China. SO EXCITING :BBB The rooms look great! ^^
 
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MissUMana

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flowersofnight wrote:
MissUMana wrote:
That's only because horse carriages are no longer allowed in NYC. ;)
I don't think they ever actually got around to banning those XD The mayor promised to do it when he was elected, but I think the lure of the tourist trap created too much resistance in city council or whatever.
We heard they were banning them. I'm glad they didn't, it's nice seeing horses in the city. Like here :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmaSCvN5YDE
 

faith

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Ooooh I dunno. I used to like horses and carriages and all that in the city, and then I went to Santorini and saw how that can turn out when left in the wrong hands.

Donkey poo. Donkey poo EVERYWHERE.
Actually, also donkeys everywhere...they just let those things free roam so they can bite and kick people.
Ugh.
 

Cerceaux

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flowersofnight wrote:
PureElegance wrote:
Opera clothes need to come back though. *drool* I yearn for the days of top hats, canes, cream scarves, and capes.
You forgot "masks"
Masks you say?
2zs9m5y.jpg
 

Wandering_Fox

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We have horses and carriages that walk the streets of Seattle for the tourists, but I've never been in one... Sometimes the police ride them too, but most of them ride bikes these days. (I was just at the airport recently and the policeman was riding his bike slower than people were walking. I was amazed he could balance!)

When I went to Charleston on a family reunion, one of the relatives found a flag on a Styrofoam puck lying in the street. Thinking nothing of it, he picked it up and started walking around with it, even taking it into a restaurant with him. No one said anything. We finally walked into a shop a while later and the young lady behind the register saw him with it and her face turned pale. She asked, "Where did you get that? Do you know what it is?" None of us had any idea. She sighed and clued us in that when horses relieve themselves on the street, the rider throws the flag down in the puddle so that people can avoid it and someone can clean it up later. We all had a good laugh as our intrepid picker-upper freaked out and threw the puck out the window, almost clocking a passerby in the head. Thankfully I had the common sense to not pick up strange tiny flags off the ground, but I think we all learned a little lesson that day.
 

flowersofnight

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Wandering_Fox wrote:
Thankfully I had the common sense to not pick up strange tiny flags off the ground
Yeah, we don't have those here XD I think if they put a flag on everything you don't want to step on, the place would look like this ::meev::

So is everyone surviving Brexit? It's been surprisingly normal so far, for the supposed end of civilization. In retrospect it was far too early to outfit my car with "Mad Max"-style spikes.
 

Wandering_Fox

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flowersofnight wrote:
Yeah, we don't have those here XD I think if they put a flag on everything you don't want to step on, the place would look like this ::meev::
Sometimes it's better to just place flags where it's SAFE to step ::meev::

flowersofnight wrote:
So is everyone surviving Brexit? It's been surprisingly normal so far, for the supposed end of civilization. In retrospect it was far too early to outfit my car with "Mad Max"-style spikes.

J. K. Rowling isn't thrilled by the recent events, but I was more interested by what Google reported: After Brexit Vote, Britain Asks Google: 'What Is The EU?'
 

PureElegance

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flowersofnight wrote:
So is everyone surviving Brexit? It's been surprisingly normal so far, for the supposed end of civilization. In retrospect it was far too early to outfit my car with "Mad Max"-style spikes.
What, the WORLD is ending because of it, we're ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!1111

Help, they're treating me like the next Cervantes here XD I'm being asked to translate documents into Spanish, do all the intakes, now I'll do the second meetings, and now I'm being referred to OTHER people to be an interpreter ::meev:: Help.
Now other people want me as an interpreter for a refugee/immigrant women interview XD

It's helping my Spanish a ton though XD My Spanish is fine, but I noticed it's mostly informal so now I'm reading up on the rulez and remembering to use "Usted" instead of "tu" when talking to people formally.

Anyway, I went to the open house of my law journal yesterday to talk to potential future members about what we do at the law journal. Towards the end no more newbies came so we all sat, so I decided to be social and stick around. I talked to three classmates about things, and I learned they were all at firms this summer writing memos and working like dogs, or something.

At some point I wasn't feeling super interested anymore so I started reading more of The Professor. A part of this review made me laugh:

Charlotte’s xenophobia gets pretty obvious in this book, too, as it didn’t in Jane Eyre. My God but she’s a nationalist. I can practically see the Union Jack billowing behind her. According to her, Brits are more attractive, cleaner, more intelligent, more cultured, and in every way superior to the continental Europeans- especially the French and the Belgians. Heaven forbid her hero fall in love with a Belgian or a French girl, despite the fact that, you know, he’s in Belgium and he’s surrounded by them. No, he falls in love with the one and only other human being of Solid British Stock.
Well thank GOD she was Solid British Stock. This made me laugh because her sentiments were toned down in Jane Eyre, but you can tell no one loved Adele, the French girl XD. I felt so bad for her throughout the novel!

That said, the element of the romance that most intrigued me here was the much-insisted-upon inequality of the master-student romance, especially as told from the masculine side. On one hand, this feminist is irritated as all get out by power inequality in a relationship when it's presented as the social norm. But there's more going on here, and it reminds me a little bit of C.S. Lewis' musings in one of his sci-fi novels about the eroticism of inequality. There's something of this in Jane Eyre too, but it's magnified here because our narrator is actually looking at and describing his ever-so-slyly-rebellious submissive, not *being* her. Where I always parted ways with Lewis, and I suppose where I part ways with Charlotte Bronte as well, is the implicit assumption that the inequality must always be in favour of the male. The one female in power in this novel, and she's quite a force, is given almost no redeeming qualities - she's a manipulator through and through.
*strokes beard* Yeah, I actually agree with going against that assumption too. Along with the "women are naturally more nurturing" assumption, I can rail against that all day. It seems as though other women/feminists were intrigued too:
While the feminist in me was proud at the Mlle Henri for being as strong as she was in a male dominant era, she took just as much pride in Monsieur Crimsworth for being as supportive as he was. What impressed me about him was the fact that he never took offense at the strong, ambitious female mind who considered herself equal to him, at least in terms of responsibilities if not so much in terms of the knowledge of the English language. He "admire her" for her strength, her individuality and her opinionatedness; and takes pride in being her equal.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! A supportive man! ::batsu:: Frances seems like a cool young lady too, and what's interesting is that by the time she meets William she's already a teacher, but she needs help learning English and she's already doing life on her own. So I guess they were on similar footing anyway, not really unequal! I can't wait to get to the love story between William and Frances so I can make my own opinion, but I like reading what others experienced.

As I was reading, one guy, who also went to NYU for undergrad, was saying he did not want Hillary as president and was reasonable and gave his thoughts. He and a classmate went back and forth about it in a nice way, and it was great to see like actual dialogue. But of course the strange people next to me said he was anti-feminist and crazy and blablabla.

What was funny was that they wouldn't say it to his FACE but rather sit on the sidelines and go on about how him being anti-woman is obviously the "underlying" thing here.

When he left they started talking badly about him and Jose, who I normally think of as a caveman, said they were being too mean about the guy, that just because someone doesn't want Hillary it doesn't mean they're anti-woman or irrational or crazy or sexist. I really admired Jose for a moment there for speaking up. He even went further and I won't go into detail, but I really admired him!
 

flowersofnight

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faith

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God damnit Hanachan. I keep telling you you don't have to fly to England every time you want to google something about the EU.
The internetz info on the EU can reach as far as the US too :lol:

No one in Europe really thought it would be the end of the world.
If anything, we kind of thought it would be a good opportunity to poke fun at the Brits and call them dumb.
But then, so did some of the Brits
We do think it'll cause some major economic problems for England. But nothing much for us. Besides, it'll take 2 years to go through.

My UK friends are expectedly unhappy about it though.
And I'm worried KM prices will go up.
 

MissUMana

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flowersofnight wrote:
So is everyone surviving Brexit? It's been surprisingly normal so far, for the supposed end of civilization. In retrospect it was far too early to outfit my car with "Mad Max"-style spikes.
There is no knowing what the consequences will be. The Vote Leave leaders opened a pandora's box. God only knows what will come out.
It's a turning point in European history, anyway. Nothing can ever be the same again.
 

faith

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MissUMana - you may be the first person I've heard say they're worried.
Actually, in all honesty, I think most people are more concerned with the Football whatever that's going on right now than the Brexit.
Eurocup or World Foot Thing or...whatever.


I mean, the UK has been threatening to leave the EU for decades.
They finally did it...sort of. Seems people want a recount because the expat votes were all "lost" lol
So it'll be interesting to see the effects but this wasn't exactly unexpected.

I don't think it will lead to a mass exodus of countries from the EU.
And I think England will have to pay at least as much, if not more, to continue to trade with the EU.
They can't afford not to because we're almost 50% of their exports.
So we'll get their money ANd not have to give as much back.
The foreign companies who have been setting up their European branches in England for favorable tax conditions will probably move into the EU, causing more jobs.
Lat but not least, we may also see less flabby, miniskirted, bare-footed drunk chicks sleeping on the side of the road in Paris during the winter.

On the downside, between this and Trump, I think the fall of anglophone power is really becoming apparent.
But I've got tons of friends in India and China so...meh. I be covered.
 

MissUMana

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Nobody in Britain or in Europe seriously believed they would leave, hence the shock. They enjoyed such preferential treatment within the EU that they must be mad leaving it.
Could be what we mainland Europeans wished for though, that is a VERY different EU. To begin with, seems like TAFTA is ruled out now.
 

faith

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Well yeah. That pissed me off. They always wanted MORE and still whinged about us after they got it.
I guess there's a little, "serves you right" in me. Except that I really am worried for my friends.

TAFTA. The American in me is saddened by this.
The European in me is going "Thank God. Who even thought that was a good idea?" lol

The dr Jekyll of TAFTA
 

PureElegance

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JasonALMS2010 wrote:
I don't see a bright future for America :( with our selection of either Trump or Clinton ::hora::
are you ANTI-WOMAN!?!!?

Just kidding, but I keep seeing that sort of reaction around me ::meev::

I was asked to be an interpreter for an 18 year old guy who escaped from El Salvador to the U.S. because of his older brother being murdered by gang members after he didn't want to join the gang and the police didn't help. So his family moved to another town, but that town had its own gang and found out about the older brother murdered so they wanted the 18 year old and his remaining brothers to join. They beat them up on their way to school, chased after them, stabbed them, extorted $200 a month from his mother, etc. So the two remaining brothers escaped to the US and the one I'll be meeting with is the last brother to come.
I read his affidavit that goes into detail and it was pretty awful. He said he knows that if he gets sent back he'll be killed as they've threatened him before and think of him escaping as a failure on their part to successfully get him to join.
He'll be applying for asylum and I'll be his interpreter o.o.
On my own I read that many asylum cases fail because people don't know they have to get their own interpreter or their interpreters are really bad.

I had some Latino clients last week and they were so nice. It was a woman who came with her daughter because the daughter knew English well. The daughter is going to the University of Pennsylvania on scholarship this fall and she wants to be a pediatrician. The mother reminded me a lot of my parents and how silly they are. It's like they all say the same things. The mother is filing for bankruptcy and she admitted it was due to her irresponsibility with credit cards and now she's learned her lesson. They were both so nice to me too! Anyway, at the end they invited me to McDonald's and I was so touched! I said I can't now because of ethics rules, but they said once I'm done I owe them a McDonald's lunch! As I was walking them out they asked if it was OK to give me a hug and I said yes!
(Richard said he can tell I'm really connecting with the clients when they invite me to my favorite restaurant XD)

Then I had some non-Latino clients come in, a mother and daughter again. The mother filed for bankruptcy with us two years ago and now her daughter is filing bankruptcy with us and she's only 25! Ugh, it's like a CYCLE OF BANKRUPTCY!

My fellow intern Jennifer is watching funny videos and dying of laughter. I'm here finishing up my cases XD

I have an audition tomorrow to get into a film class. I'm doing a monologue from Finding Nemo. I've always wanted to perform it so... yeah!
No. No, you can’t. …STOP! Please don’t go away. Please? No one’s ever stuck with me for so long before. And if you leave…if you leave… I just, I remember things better with you! I do, look! P. Sherman, forty-two…forty-two… I remember it, I do. It’s there, I know it is, because when I look at you, I can feel it. And…and I look at you, and I…and I’m home! Please…I don’t want that to go away. I don’t want to forget.
I always get teary-eyed at this.
 
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Cerceaux

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Going to Anime Expo tomorrow with 70,000 of my closest friends.
There's apparently a Neko Atsume booth with a giant Tubbs plush you can take photos with. Heaven is real ::squee::
 
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