Grand Adventure

I still suck at planning, which is weird and a little sad to say since at one point in my life I had imagined making a living from plotting.

In just about a week, I'll embark on what I referred to in my head as The Grand Adventure. When I first thought of this crazy scheme, I planned an entire tour across Asia: Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. Unfortunately, I can't swing that much money or vacation time, or I could but it would really cut down on the time and money spent in each country, or just splurge it all and extend it way past the amount of vacation time available. Plus, I'm not sure how my brain and body will react to not working for that many days in a row as I've basically hit a rhythm of working everyday. So, what The Grand Adventure transformed into is a week in Japan and one week one and a half weeks in South Korea, which seems like enough time to explore both places, if I knew what I was doing.

First off, the number one reason for this trip is for a reunion weekend with some of my dormmates from Plume IS from back when I studied abroad at Keio University

I really feel like I should have a better picture with everyone, but I can't find it

I've seen just about a dozen of them over the past 10 years (either here or abroad) but it's going to be really cool for a lot of us to be in the same place at the same time. I'm assuming from the silent Facebook stalking I've been doing over the years, everyone has something interesting going on with their lives and it'll be fun catching up and hearing all about it. Plus, you know, NOMIHOUDAI! (that is sadly the extent of my Japanese, besides "Toire wa doko desu ka?" and "Tabako wo sutte moo ii desu ka?") Luckily, for the most part, I'll be surrounded by friends whose Japanese is much, much better than mine, and who are also much, much better at planning than I am. I'm sure they've planned enough to the point that all I need to do is show-up and mooch off of their hard work. Thanks again. I guess in the one or two days after everyone leaves and I'm still in Tokyo I'll wander around ... I don't know, I haven't thought up that part yet ... I'll probably just catch pokemon I guess.

And then it's off to Korea ... where I'll ... umm ... I'll be in Korea. Really, the only thing I originally planned on doing in Korea was visiting my cousin who teaches English over there. And then, after setting up the trip, I remembered to ask her if it was okay that I didn't know any Korean. None at all. I managed to get by in Japan with very, very limited skills and some really good friends. Only after I got excited by this idea and booked my flight did I tell myself, "Hey moron, what the hell are you thinking?! You don't know any words, or even letters, and no one is going to be there to hold your hand through this. Are you insane?" Well, she reassured me that I should be okay without knowing anything, though I'm still not sure if it's because most people might speak English, or if she thinks that I survived Japan on some top-notch charade skills. She also dumped on me a load of places to check out in Seoul that I really should get around to looking over just so I can create some semblance of an itinerary, or at least look up activities to do.

If you've been following my newest obsession/addiction, then you may have guessed that I did look if any of my favorite Kpop groups were going to have a concert while I was there. I also checked if Scandal would have anything, but I'm pretty sure all the concerts were after I left Japan. Anyways, at first there weren't any so my cousin set me up with a tour website that'll let you into one of those live music programs on Korean TV that fill up my Youtube feed where you can watch the groups perform their songs. My biggest hope is that Dreamcatcher is still performing their latest song, though I doubt it since they released it about a month ago already. My silver medal hope is that Twice actually does release their new song while I'm there since it might mean that they'll perform that night as well. After getting my tickets to that, my cousin let me know that if I could extend my trip a bit, we could go to the Blackpink concert. I had to turn it down at first: I was already taking the longest vacation I've ever been on; I would need to reschedule 2 different flights and re-book my hostel stay; I would need to clear the extension with work where we are already short-staffed, etc. Then, when the second set of tickets went on sale and after a long, long mental debate, a couple nights of "gentle" encouragement from my friends ("Alan, what are you doing, just go to the concert!", "Quit your job and go to the concert", etc), and suppressing my travel anxiety long enough to make a rational decision it finally clicked, "Alan, this is Blackpink and it's probably going to be your only chance to go!" So, I re-booked everything I dreaded doing, informed work that I was going to be gone another couple days, and asked my cousin to make sure I don't charge the stage. "Alan, you can't reach the stage from our section on the 2nd floor." "I'll find a way." And so, thanks to the generosity of others, I now have one concert ticket, one music show pass, and a folded-up piece of paper with a bunch of words that I assume are places written haphazardly. It's looking like the start of a great trip.

I know I say this every trip, but this time was definitely worse. I really do suck at planning. Procrastination hit hard this trip as I left basically everything to the last minute. As I write this I've still yet to start packing, I still need to look up things to do in both Japan and Korea, and there are probably a bunch of things I'm going to discover I still need to buy. Also, my plane takes off ... tomorrow ... or right now depending whenever I finish writing this. I feel like the biggest reason is that things just tend to work out for me, that even with my poor planning skills (and even worse grasp on reality) nothing truly terrible has yet to befall me. I know that's a horrible way to think about it, but it's kinda true. I managed to survive hiking Mt. Fuji with just a hoodie and 2 t-shirts when I should've packed warmer. When our Spring Break Seattle to San Francisco trip was cut short, we were first in line and managed to get 2 rooms in a hotel and our flights rebooked to come back home. When I lost my passport within an hour of landing in Australia, someone turned it over to the ticket counter and I got it back as quickly as I lost it. When I got lost wandering around New York and Seattle, I randomly stumbled across the right train station, or got on the right bus, to get me where I needed to go. It's almost as if I'm waiting on something really, really bad to happen to me before I change my ways. [*last minute note: apparently the music program tv show audience I was supposed to go to got cancelled earlier this week, so I guess it was lucky I gave in to peer pressure and agreed to go to the Blackpink concert. So like I said, things tend to work out, so far.]

And finally, (you can skip this part if you want, there's nothing about my trip after this) the worst part of this whole thing has been that my anxiety coping mechanism - writing - seems to have been severed from me as I've forgotten how to write. For example, this entire post took me about two weeks to write. Yeah, TWO WEEKS to write about something I've been excited about for a couple months now. That should not happen. Typically, the words should just flow out and I would finish this in a day or two, and just taken extra time to find pictures and videos to link. I discovered this new disability earlier this month and still can't quite get over it. With all the time I've spent on this, I haven't given writing stories a try again, but the last time I did I was trashing everything after a couple sentences, if I could even get it started. It's frustrating and annoying and then I realize I'm wasting time writing anyways since there's other, more important, things to do right now, and then I get annoyed and frustrated all over again.

Books of 2018: Quarter 3

King's Justice by Stephen R. Donaldson

I just happened to come across this book while walking the shelves at Barnes and Nobles one day and just figured I'd pick it up since I haven't read Stephen R. Donaldson since high school. I enjoyed the first 6 of the Thomas Covenant series, never got around to the last 4 books. Anyways, this caught my eye since I assumed he stopped writing a while ago. This turned out to be 2 novellas and though it only totaled about 300 pages, it still felt long. It's 300 pages, I'm sure I should've been able to fly through that, which I might've, but it felt like it took a lot longer to read. I'm not sure if that was the style of the Thomas Covenant series, or if it's just because the pacing didn't move as fast as the other books I was reading at the time. A lot of time is spent in the characters' heads compared to other books I've been reading recently which were more action/movement oriented.
King's Justice: Black is the stranger riding into town to investigate a murder in a normally peaceful town, and to deliver the King's Justice. There he finds the murder is not as it seems, but luckily Black is no ordinary investigator. With him comes the King's Justice, something for which no one can prepare. A bit more philosophical but definitely in line with what I remember from the Thomas Covenant series, the climax of the story focuses on the balance of competing forces: Light vs Dark, Good vs Evil, and even the forces of nature themselves.
The Auger's Gambit: Mayhew Gordian, the Queen's Hieronomer, discovers doom comes for their island nation in the readings of sacrificial blood and entrails. Every reading he makes shows the same outcome no matter the choices he or his queen make. Knowing that enslavement or civil war await, he must learn all the secrets that make his people special to save everyone. The thing that I liked the most about this story is that the main character was a Hiernomer, a character typically depicted as a bad guy in stories due to the bloody work they do. It was a interesting change, as Mayhew's work is bloody and is given some imagery in the story.


An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard

"Ian bent his hands at such severe angles, it looked like they would snap. He spoke a phrase that scorched the back of his throat, that spattered blood across his lips and sent a dragon of flame rising into the air."

"'Magic, at its heart, starts with sacrifice. You have to give up something to get something, and because magic is big, with all that it allows you access to, what you give up has to be big. It has to be meaningful.'"

In New York City, the heads of the magical Houses are notified that The Turning has begun. The tournament to decide a new head of the magical community usually occurs just once a generation, however this one has begun earlier than expected, and in less than half the time. Some magical houses recruit contenders to fight on their behalf, others nominate one of their own, all of them looking to show their magical skill. What no one prepares for is newcomer Sydney, an unknown to their society but someone who is determined to change magic forever. 

I'm not sure where the influence came from, but the story definitely has a post-Harry Potter feel to it. Prior to the Harry Potter series, magic in other stories was easy: wave a wand and say some funny words and magic would solve your problems. In this story, magic is done with hand motions, no wands. The words are not just random nonsense phrases or butchered Latin. Instead when the characters speak, Howard never gives the said word (which can sometimes derail the flow of the reading) but describes the sound of the word typically in terms of what the spell is capable of doing. As I said, this helps to keep the flow of the reading because if you're like me, you could spend several minutes trying to figure out what you think is the correct pronunciation of the word, and if you're like 12 year old me, you'll waste more time trying to cast them hoping that it actually works. And, unlike Harry Potter magic that just always seems readily available to cast, magic in this book has a price to pay: pain.

Though I usually have some issues with it, remembering all of the characters wasn't as big an issue as it was with other books. I think what really helped was that the main cast was introduced in separate sections in the first chapter, establishing who each character was and their importance to the story.


Calypso by David Sedaris

Regarding his sister's suicide by asphyxiation : "I've always like to think that before killing myself I'd take the time to really mess with people... When you're in the state that my sister was in, and that most people are in when they take their own lives, you're not thinking of anything beyond your own pain. Thus the plastic bag - the maximizer, as it were - the thing a person reaches for after their first attempt at an overdose fails and they wake up sick a day later thinking, I can't even kill myself right."

Regarding doing good deeds: "You're not supposed to talk about your good deeds, I know. It effectively negates them and in the process makes people hate you. If there's a disaster, for instance, and someone tells me he donated five thousand dollars to the relief effort - this while I gave a lesser amount, or nothing at all - I don't think, Goodness, how bighearted you are, but, rather, Fuck you for making me look selfish."

I bought this book without any foreknowledge besides reading good reviews and that Sedaris has a dark sense of humor. Also, at the time, I was writing that 3-part (which turned into 4 unfinished parts) Eulogy series and I was having some trouble (still having trouble) getting it all down. So I was looking for something that could help me out. Plus, it was on sale (20% off I think).

Like most of his books (I'm assuming as I haven't read any of his other books) Calypso is a seemingly random collection of stories about his life. I honestly don't know if their was a common theme through all of them, maybe because I wasn't really looking that hard. I was just entertained by EVERY SINGLE STORY. Some of the stories are inherently funny, like when he talks about his Fitbit obsession, the entire chapter about his height, or learning about insults used in other cultures; but some of them get deep and dark, such as when he talks about his sister's suicide, his relationship with his father, growing up with an alcoholic mother, coming out to his family and friends. In all of these stories though, he always finds something about the situation to poke fun at or make a joke just as things might start to get really, really serious, providing a balance between the dark and the light. It was amazing to read and I'm definitely going to look for more of his books.

I understand that most people don't like reading, but if you've ever wanted to read something and you've been reading these reviews to look for something, this is the book you should read. I've been loaning movies to a co-worker of mine, and one of the rules she gave me was no Sci-Fi or Fantasy, which knocks out about 3/4 of my movie collection. So, I understand that a lot of the books I read fall into this category too, but ... I forgot the point I was trying to make. Oh, if you've been skimming these posts looking for a book that wasn't another fantasy book, this is the one you should get. I think that's where I was going with this, anyways.

note: it was really hard to find short quotes that I could use as the stories he tells are so connected and well put together that to just isolate a sentence here or there without its proper context would just be baffling and you'd have no idea what I'm talking about.


Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men."

"Flicked wrists, arms cracked like whips, and throwing stars take flight, possessed of their own fierce rotation, bound on twisted parabolas. No mother gave her child so much direction, or set them spinning along their course through the world with such care."

Nona Gray is rescued from the hangman's noose to be trained as a sister at the Convent of Sweet Mercy. The church, however doesn't just teach young girls to become nuns faithful to the Ancestor, but trained killers as well. The story follows young Nona as she goes through the first two classes at the convent (Red, during which the girls are trained in combat; and Grey, where they are trained in poisons), as well as discovers secrets about herself and the world. The first book in what I assume will be another trilogy, this book covers the first part of Nona's training, establishes the setting, as well as reveals intriguing aspects of their society that will probably play a bigger role in the later books. (note: Gray Sister is out but I'm waiting for the paperback version).

My favorite part of Lawrence's writing is the way he writes fight scenes, and, like his other books, this one doesn't disappoint. If you don't believe me, try it: watch an action movie then try to describe it in full detail with every single motion, and watch your audience's eyes glaze over. To talk about a fight scene solely on the character's actions is boring. Lawrence though manages it through pacing and word choice, making it feel real and exciting and even intimate as if you were involved in some way. It's something I've yet to learn to replicate in my own writing.

One of the hardest parts of this book was keeping track of the huge cast of characters. As I've said before with other books and, sadly, in real life as well, I'm terrible with names and it gets worse when I'm introduced to a bunch of characters. Though I think I remembered all of the trainees, I know for a fact that even by the end of the book, I couldn't remember who were all the Sisters.