A Bunch of Updates--Then I'm Off to Tucson!

Hey everyone! I've just spent a great deal of time catching up my blog on all the fun events of the summer so far. I hope you'll take the time to read them and comment! First of all, there's one for June 2 when I met David Archuleta, then there's my account of Adam Lambert's glamazing GlamNation concert on June 22, then there's an entry about the Pride Parade on June 27, and finally one about the incredible Japanese play I saw on July 8 called Musashi!

I have had my share of fun events this summer. But all the while, I was attending summer classes at Hunter until July 13. Those two classes, US History and Literature, kept me surprisingly busy. If you're wondering what I did for July 4, I didn't really do anything. I watched an Independence Day special on TV and maybe did some homework. The parentals were out of town on their own little shindig. I haven't been able to get together with any of my few friends this summer yet. I've been rather lonely. But this is not a negativity blog so we will bypass that issue here! I've been regularly checking out some great DVDs from the public library, so that's been enjoyable. I've watched some Japanese film classics, some anime, and some modern American movies as well.

Tomorrow (July 21) I'm leaving town to go visit Tucson again! I'm so excited to see my friends and family. I'll be there for about a month apparently, so I should have some good times with them. I probably won't be able to update the bloggity boo for a while because of this trip. So please catch up on reading whatever entries you haven't read yet, and leave yummy comments for me to read when I return to cyberland. Thank you! Peace and love to all.

One Year Anniversary! And Some Updates

Hello, my dear readers! (Who am I kidding? How many of you are there, like three tops?) It is now June 2010, which marks the one year anniversary since I started this blog, which means it also marks the one year anniversary since I moved to New York City! Wow. I cannot believe I've lived here for a whole year. The time has gone by so fast. In "celebration" of one year of my blog, I've changed the layout (as you might have noticed) using Blogger's new designing tools! Isn't it lovely? Thank goodness they updated those template options, because the old ones were so boring. My new cityscape background gives it a nice New York-y theme, don't you think?

The past few months have been busy and somewhat distressing because of school stuff, so I didn't get around to write about more April and May stuff until just last night. But I placed the entries neatly under their proper dates to keep everything in order. That's the way I like to do things. So be sure to catch up on the entries for May 31, May 8, and April 11! Oh, and if you haven't watched those few Vlogs I recorded, do that too. I had previously thought I'd be doing more videos, but to make a long story short, I've just been having too much trouble working out the technical stuff. Plus, I think text entries are easier for me (or my three readers) to refer to than video ones--like if I happen to be looking for the record of such-and-such event, it's easier to just look for it in text rather than watching a video. So, I think I best stick to mostly text. And photos, of course! Pretty pictures are always a good thing.

Anyways, I survived my second semester of college at Hunter, but only barely. I've now started two classes in the summer session, either because I'm freaking insane or because my mother basically ordered me to. I'm taking two Gen Ed courses, Literature and US History, but they're okay so far. In my free time, I've been watching anime and movies that I check out from the public library, which serves as a nice expense-free substitute for Blockbuster. On the weekends, I've also spent mucho time video chatting with Nick on Skype. That's been fun!

The upcoming week has some excitement in store. I've got my ticket for Adam Lambert's GlamNation Tour concert on Tuesday, June 22! I've been looking forward to this for months, so that's been keeping me going. The YouTube videos I've seen of his show are glamtastic! For me, this man is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He is the incredibly talented and sparkly gay performing artist that I've been needing all my life. It's important for us gays to have our icons. I'm so excited about his official concert tour! Oh, and coincidentally enough, this upcoming week is also Gay Pride Week here in New York! So I'll tell you all about that stuff maybe next week or sometime after! In the meantime, enjoy Adam's music video for his latest single "If I Had You":

February Fun Times

Again, it's actually April at the time I'm typing this, but I like to keep my posts listed under their proper months.

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Wednesday, February 3:

After my morning class, I headed over to the Queer Student Union (which I didn't really know existed before) to check out their open house thing. I had seen a flyer hanging in a hallway, and I thought it would be a good place to finally start making more friends. The open house consisted of a gathering of a fairly small group of people, and we all introduced ourselves. We then went over the calendar of scheduled activities for this semester at the QSU. So this pretty much marked the beginning of my social life at Hunter College. Good stuff.

Wednesday, February 10:

This was the first Snow Day of the semester. I cannot explain how happy this day made me (especially since it would mean I would not have to go to school for 6 six days, what with my having Thursdays off, and that following Friday and next Monday being scheduled holidays at Hunter). Although, it would have been nice if Hunter had posted the news that class was cancelled before I went to the school, only to discover that the place was deserted. Anyways, the snow was beautiful, covering the city and the parks in a white blanket. After I got some more sleep, Mom and went out to Riverside Park to enjoy the snow. We built a snowman by the 91st street garden. I don't know how long it had been since I made a snowman, or even played in the snow. Well, actually, it was probably about 11 years.

Thursday, February 11:

I went to the Valentines Party at the QSU! I had some fun conversation, ate some pizza, met a bunch of new friends, and danced the night away. Lady Gaga is always the music highlight. I think I can get used to this party thing. As long as it doesn't get too insane, haha. But I think these people have just the right amount of crazy. I like them!

Friday, February 26:

Snow Day number 2! Hell yeah. Mom and I went out to Riverside again to enjoy the snow. We made some snowballs and generally just strolled about leisurely, taking in all the gorgeous whiteness that surrounded us. I took lots of pictures this times. Pretty!

I took videos too!

Saturday, February 27:

I'm pretty sure it was on this day, but I'm not 100% positive. My parents took me to see a play on Broadway called Present Laughter, written by the great Noel Coward. It starred Victor Garber in the lead role, who has starred in many film, TV, and stage roles. I'll paste the basic plot summary from Wikipedia.org so I don't have to come up with my own:

• "The plot follows a few days in the life of the successful and self-obsessed actor Garry Essendine as he prepares to travel for a touring commitment in Africa. Amid a series of events bordering on farce, Garry has to deal with women who want to seduce him, placate both his long-suffering secretary and his estranged wife, cope with a crazed young playwright, and overcome his fear of his own approaching fortieth birthday and, by implication, his impending mid-life crisis. The story was described by Coward as 'a series of semi-autobiographical pyrotechnics'."

Basically, the play was hilarious. All the actors were fantastic. We loved it! What more can I say? We were sitting in the very back row but it wasn't bad at all since the theater was smaller.

Okay, I guess that's pretty much it for February!

Starting School; Circle Line Boat Tour (Sept. 5)

This weekend has been phenomenal, but first thing's first. I'm going back almost a month here: I started going to school at Hunter College of CUNY on August 28. I was kind of nervous and unhappy as I usually am at the beginning of a new school year. It was especially intimidating since I wasn't just starting at a new school, I'm starting at a new school in a new city! Well, my classes turned out not to be as scary as I feared. I do have a rather weird schedule though. Here's what it looks like:

Monday

7:00 PM-8:15 PM > Introduction to Cinema (Lecture)

Tuesday

12:45 PM-2:00 PM > (History of) East Asia to 1600

2:10 PM-3:25 PM > Japanese Culture I

3:45 PM-5:00 PM > Basic Structures of Math

8:25 PM-9:40 PM > Media in the Digital Age (Lecture)

Wednesday

5:50 PM-6:40 PM > Introduction to Cinema (Discussion)

7:00 PM-8:15 PM > Introduction to Cinema (Lecture)

8:25 PM-9:40 PM > Media in the Digital Age (Lab)

Thursday

Off!

Friday

12:45 PM-2:00 PM > (History of) East Asia to 1600

2:10 PM-3:25 PM > Japanese Culture I

3:45 PM-5:00 PM > Basic Structures of Math

The benefit is that I never have to wake up earlier than 9:45 AM. How awesome is that? As for the classes themselves, I'm learning some cool stuff and most of my teachers are pretty great. I'm especially loving my Film class, of course. It's so much fun learning about movies. If you're wondering about the freakishly easy math class, I'm taking that because I have to--Hunter doesn't count College Algebra (which I took at Pima) for the general education requirement. Overall, my classes are quite interesting though. I'm actually not going to say anything else about my classes, because this is technically a public blog, and if I publish anything even remotely negative and it gets out, I could be hunted down by the Hunter mafia (no pun intended) or something. I don't know. Just e-mail me if you want to know any more about my classes.

I will say this about my college experience so far: I started out on top of my school work, but now I feel like I can't keep up because of my time management and motivation issues. I'm still fighting the same demons after all these years of dealing with homework overload. And... I'm going to stop there because I don't want this to become another self-loathing emo blog like my LiveJournal was.

Okay, now for non-school stuff. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend my parents gave me a rude awakening (literally) only to drag me downtown so we could go on one of those Circle Line boat tours around Manhattan island. On a different day, I might have been happy to go, but for some reason this was a bad day for me. I was grumpy most of the time. However, I still managed to get some great photos, as you'll see below. The first few are actually the New Jersey skyline, but you'll also get to see a few icons of New York City. I would actually highly recommend the boat tour if you're a tourist (duh). It's pretty cool. Well, enjoy the photos!

Next up on "New York State of Mind," you'll hear all about the fun I had this weekend at the New York Anime Festival 2009--my very first nerd convention! Stay tuned.

The Grand Tour

I told you a while back I would show you our apartment. Well, finally, here it is. I figured a video tour would be more effective since I can't get a decent indoor photograph with my camera. Plus, it showcases the features better. Enjoy!

In other news, school starts in about 9 days--on a Friday. How weird and pointless is that? And oh geez, I don't even have my books, because last time I checked, the required texts weren't even posted yet for most of my classes. Hunter College really has their act together, don't they? Here's hoping my relationship with this school improves when my learning experience gets under way.

Pride Rally, Kinokuniya, and Burnt DVDs for Rental

Saturday kicked off the GLBT Pride festivities (in spite of still more rain) with the Rally in Bryant Park, featuring a slew of activist speakers, comedians, singers, and other performers supporting our pride and promoting the cause of gay rights. I checked it out after I got lost in Times Square (as seen above) for a little bit. The crowd at the Rally was surprisingly small, maybe because of the weather. When I arrived there, I barely caught the end of Dustin Lance Black's speech--he's the young Oscar-winning screenwriter of the film Milk! So he's kind of a big deal and all. I was mad I didn't get there in time for his whole speech. But it's awesome that I saw him in person. As a matter of fact, he walked out amongst the audience casually and he literally walked right behind me! Right behind me! Like not even two inches away! As I farted around all star-struck, I contemplated the idea of asking to get a photo with him-- I mean, what an opportunity right? But you know what? I freaking didn't. Because I'm a freaking moron and I don't take hold of the chances that are right in front of my freaking face. IDIOT. He left the park a few minutes later and I will most likely never get the chance to get a photo with Dustin Lance Black ever again.

This is the best photo I could grab of him, or rather the back of him (he's the guy with the white shirt tucked in, carrying a cup of coffee), with my slow camera. Lame, I know.




Here's a shot of the whole rally.


After battling with my dissappointment in myself, I left. Well, I also just got bored of standing around watching the show by myself. There were some cute guys around that I was checking out, but I suck at talking to people so I didn't meet anybody. Geez, me being an idiot again. GAH.

Well, here's some pretty pics in and around Bryant Park.






Anyways, one of my favorite stores in all of New York City happens to be right across from Bryant Park--Kinokuniya Books. It's a Barnes & Noble-esque bookstore dedicated predominately to Japan and all things Japanese, including a basement floor comprised entirely of books in Japanese. But the best thing of all is the second floor, where they have an incredible selection of domestic and imported manga and manga artbooks, plus a decent selection of anime. I couldn't buy anything since I spent money back at Forbidden Planet. Sad face. Frustrated face!

And by the way, to take full advantage of the awesomeness that New York City has to offer, one needs money. And to get money, one needs a job. I hate job searching. Hate it. But I'm freaking dying here. So much manga, so little money! Well. I'll let you know how that job search goes.

Um, Sunday's not really worth mentioning apparently because I can't remember it.

On Monday, I was supposed to have an appointment at Hunter with an academic advisor, but to make a long story short, the bus was really late and the traffic was bad so I missed my appointment. That frustrating experienced started off my day badly and it didn't really get interesting after that anyways.

The past couple of days, I've felt a little down. It's hard to explain, but I think I'm just lonely and frustrated because I don't have any friends to hang out with. I don't mind hanging out with my parents, but the conversation can only cover so much, you know what I mean? My nights have often been spent watching anime by myself, which is all good, but it would just be so much more fun if I had someone here named Mike with whom to analyze and discuss it.

I watched an incredible anime movie this week called Metropolis. It's a modern classic with great characters, dazzling animation, and interesting themes. Hm. That statement was a pretty generic comment that goes for pretty much any great anime film, wasn't it? Well, let's just say Metropolis is probably one of my new favorites. You should watch it.

On Tuesday, I checked out our local library on 100th St. It's a small and humble library, but they actually had a decent selection of manga including a single yaoi manga. I was amused. But I have to get a library card before I can check anything out and I applied for one online. I can't wait to get it because since I can't buy manga, I'm definitely down to check it out for free!

Here's a random pretty church I found in the neighborhood while looking for the library:




Today I had a successful appointment with an advisor at Hunter. I went over some questions I had about... collegiate stuff. You know. After that, I took the 6 train down to Grand Central Station and got lost for a while trying to find a Japanese video rental store. When I finally found it... well, let's just say their merch wasn't exactly legit. Ha. Okay, you know what, I'll just tell you: their DVDs were burnt discs with photocopied covers on the cases. No lie. Cute, huh?

New York Living: Day Something or Other

Monday was an important day. That morning, I had my transfer student orientation at Hunter College, where I learned about registration, general ed requirements, and all of that exciting stuff. My preparation for my new college has just begun though; my list of things to do has greatly increased since I learned all the things I have to take care of before school starts. Ah, well. All part of being a student.

Hunter's facilities frankly aren't very attractive, except for the cool old building you see below. The quality of the education is supposed to be great, though. It sure as hell better be, haha. Their Film program seems promising but I have to say I'm dissappointed with their offerings of Japan-related classes. They have a whole program dedicated to China and the Chinese language, but Japanese is merely thrown into the "Classical and Oriental Studies" category. Apparently I won't be getting a minor in Japanese at Hunter. Honestly, it makes me have second thoughts about finishing school there; maybe I'll transfer yet again to another school in New York that has more Japanese offerings--if there is one.


Speaking of things Japanese, after orientation I checked out this beautiful shop nearby called Things Japanese. They had all kinds of genuine Japanese antiques, woodblock prints, paintings, decorations, dishes, and such. And I do mean genuine; this wasn't the cheap, touristy Asian gift shop I'm used to seeing. They had real, old Japanese stuff. That equals tres pricey, my friends. So, I couldn't afford anything, and I just gazed around and dreamt of the day when I'll be a wealthy film maker picking out all sorts of nifty decorations for my apartment on Central Park West. Or Riverside Drive. Or 76th Street.

On my way back home, I walked through Central Park because it was such a gorgeous sunny day. Here's some photos.




On Tuesday, my mom and I spent the afternoon shopping for groceries and other household necessities. It was actually kinda fun checking out our neighborhood. I also peeked in a store called Futonland, which had some nice futon furniture, shoji screens, and shoji lamps--which I loved because they're exactly the type of Japanese-style lamps I've always wanted to buy. But they were kind of overpriced.

On Wednesday, I headed to Pier 1 Imports, but before I found that, I stumbled upon a cool comic book shop called Time Machine. They didn't have much in the way of manga, though, so I didn't stay long. Anyways, after buying a cushion (for my desk chair) at Pier 1, and getting some good ol' New York style pizza, I walked to Forbidden Planet (near Union Square), a paradise for comic book and manga enthusiasts. They have lots of decently priced action figures from all the biggest franchises--mostly Western, some Japanese--but they didn't have much DragonBall stuff this time around. However, I spent the rest of my afternoon on the second floor, which is dedicated to manga and anime. Their selection is pretty fantastic, and of course my personal favorite thing about Forbidden Planet is their outstanding selection of yaoi manga. I have never seen another store with such a large section dedicated solely to the genre. For that matter, I've never seen another store with a yaoi section at all. Freakin' sweet. I bought some, not gonna lie.

But enough of my gayness. Thursday, the heavy rains came back and I just spent my day doing things around the house and writing up lists for college-related tasks. It's been quite a process getting our decorations up and it's still not even done. I've still got to figure out exactly where I'm hanging things in my room. But last night we did get my shoji screen up behind my bed to act as a decorative headboard. It looks pretty awesome. Today, I drove myself crazy working on arranging and rearranging my room again, and mom and I took a walk down Broadway.

No pictures of our place yet. Sorry. All in good time.