The Asian test of courage

My sister’s boyfriend came over.

My sister and I are finally finished finals and at home, so her boyfriend from Pittsburgh came over for three days. That’s three days in an Asian household. With Asian food. I should mention that my sister’s boyfriend is predominantly German and Polish.

So my family.

Does this to him.

As crazy as we get, however, eggrolls taste good. But my dad decided to pull some other fun foods out of his hat.

And finally, the kicker: durian. If you don’t know what durian is, it’s a large, spiky, tropical fruit typically grown in Southeastern Asia. Its odor is very… distinct. Quote Wikipedia, “Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive.” As kids, my sister and I fell more onto the “offensive” side. (Though now, we both find it perfectly edible.)

And my sister’s poor boyfriend had this thrust upon him.

But hey, he tried it! And thus my sister’s boyfriend passed our little test of courage. Props to him! Though we’ve barely branched into some of the weirder Vietnamese dishes. Some Viet foods even I’m unable to handle.

Fetal chicken, straight from the egg. My parents like it, but it's an area I haven't ventured into yet.

Screw finals, tomorrow’s Christmas

One day, my suitemates and I were looking at our cheerful Christmas décor and decided it needed a little something extra.

Thus, we decided, that before we all headed home, we would have a wonderful Christmas morning of our own! We would wake at dawn, open gifts, and share some holiday cheer!

Of course, this was in the middle of finals week. It matters little. Christmas takes priority over grades any day.

So we all went out, bought gifts for each other, and stuffed them into each others’ stockings. Stockings? Oh yes, stockings. My suitemates went so far as to obtain matching stockings, each in a various ghetto-fabulous print:

Thus we waited in anticipation for Christmas morning to come. Or more like passed out in bed until somebody woke us up.

And we all opened our gifts! It was delightful. We all obviously have very mature tastes.

And finally, our dear suitemates had a “Christmas surprise” for us!

Though we had trouble breaking it open.

It’s okay. We’re college kids. We can solve this, no problem.

And the piñata opened, with plenty of goodies inside.

Ah, yes. My suitemates are wonderful people. And that is how we celebrated Christmas at 7 in the morning! Though afterwards, we all headed straight for our beds. Except for one of us—she had to head to a final. All in the spirit of Christmas!

Helmet adventures

I finally obtained a helmet to wear while longboarding, and I look extremely dorky while wearing it. I’d rather wear the helmet than smash my head open, though, so no complaints. Maybe I won’t get catcalled as much now.

Tweet tweet

At the pestering of my dear friends, I now have a twitter!

Well, I’ve had it for a month or so. I think I’ve only used it for those “tweet me to win free stuff!” deals. I guess I’m not into the whole “sharing-every-intimate-detail-of-where-I-am-and-what-I’m-doing” thing. Nor do I have the wit to Tweet cleverly.

But WordPress does have a fun little function that lets you link new posts to your Twitter. So, Twitterites– if you do choose to follow me on Twitter, you’ll get on-the-dot updates when new posts are up!

I’ll be tweetin’ at @comicsmaniac. That is all!

Our dorm room is going to catch on fire any second now (Merry Christmas!)

It was Sunday night.

My first final was in 5 days.

And this is what I was doing.

My dear ol’ roommate decided that our room need a little wintry cheer, so she went to Target and got us some! And brought back a sack o’ goodies.

And, of course, we spent the whole evening decorating and not doing any work at all.

So now our room is effectively a fire hazard, filled with forbidden Christmas cheer! Shh… don’t tell the RA. Besides, we keep all the lights off whenever we leave the room.

 

And now all I want to do is go home and eat some plum pudding. Excuse me while I go cry into my textbooks, listening to Christmas music that tears at my heartstrings.

(By the way, if you noticed that the drawings are particularly horrible today… that’s why. Finals time!)

I get an Asian haircut

Haircuts are a risky business.

Cosmo (I admit, I’ve read a couple of issues) put it this way: “A haircut is an accessory that you have to wear every day. You’re stuck with it. It’s an investment.”

True. So true. For the longest time I would get haircuts from cheap chains like Great Clips or Supercuts. These were the days I kept my hair short. I would usually end up looking like this:

For seven or eight dollars, what do you expect? And the truth is, Asian hair has a different quality to it. Mine’s rougher. Thicker. Potentially poofier. The voluminous hair some crave I dread.

But a few years back, my problems were solved!

My family was in Toronto Chinatown. I needed a haircut. I saw one for $12.

Best decision ever.

All my previous haircuts looked like this:

But Chinatown? They get Asian customers. They know Asian hair. When I got my hair cut in Toronto that day, it looked like this:

…and afer that, I always got my hair cut in Chinatown. They will attack your hair. Brutalize it. Make sure it lays flat. It’s awesome.

Chinatown haircuts are a gamble, though. Usually the hairdresser’s English is less than perfect.

So more often than not I’ll walk in, sit down, and roll with it, with variable results. I once got a haircut in Boston while wearing neither glasses nor contacts, so I was completely blind. Meaning I couldn’t see the haircut in progress.

The end result:

My strategy? Bring a photo! It makes it a lot easier. Take my most recent haircut, for example…

Still, it’s an big improvement from the bowl cut of my grade school days.

My hair grows quickly anyway. One bad haircut is no big deal, because in a week it’ll go back to this:

I  just stopped by Chinatown to get a haircut, so I had to write this post. By the way, using a photo of a video game character totally worked. I’m quite pleased with the result.

I gain the freshman fifteen during Thanksgiving

Who said college gives you the freshman fifteen?

I finally got to go home to the Philly ‘burbs this weekend. NU’s Thanksgiving break, granted, isn’t that long. We only get Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off, not the whole week like some schools. And I was a good student and didn’t skip any classes (I totally should have) so I returned home on Wednesday.

Traveling is expensive. A train ticket from Boston to Philly is anywhere from $60 to over $100, one way. Want to fly? That’s at least $100. The service on Greyhound is not worth their prices. Yeah. I’m a poor college kid. I prefer to take the Megabus, which, if you book tickets early enough, can be as low as $1.50 one way. Thanksgiving is a time when everyone travels, though, so my tickets cost $84.50—but my tickets to for winter break cost $12.00 total, both ways. Not bad.

So my high school friend and I got to enjoy an excruciatingly long journey from Boston to Philly! It was a wonderfully delayed, traffic-stuck ride.

So, two hours late, our bus pulled into 30th street station. From there, I took the regional rail home for another hour to reach my family after a good 9-hour trip.

I could finally start my break! And it ended up looking a little like this:

And at home, I don’t have access to a gym, so instead of exercising I passed my time like this:

So my break was, really, quite nice! Seeing my family and friends is always a delight. But now it is back to school, and I must deal with upcoming finals. Terrifying. Can’t it just be winter break yet?

Black Friday is a fire hazard

Just playing around with video blogging. No worries, though– I’m not going to be a video blogger anytime soon. Watching myself talk is really awkward.

In reality it has no meaning

Just a quick post. I actually have this problem a lot. Those “creative” English assignments? Yeah, I always handed in these absurd, over-the top comics. My freshman year, for a project, I went crazy and drew this 117-page graphic novel. (A couple I drew for my senior year on Hamlet and Robert Frost are on my never-updated  deviantart, if you’re into poorly-drawn comics.)