Prosperitas · per · Perseverantia

The car is up for sale. The sooner I sell it, the better. If I can get $4-5000 for it, that will enable me to pay it off for a little less than what it would cost to keep up with the monthly payments for the next 9 months, and have a couple thousand left over. I can put that in the bank, and it will cover the automatic withdrawals for my student loan for the next 10 months.

Also, I am moving out of my place, and getting a room closer to the office, so I can walk/ride a bike to work. This will virtually eliminate my overhead, enabling me to save about $2000 per month. This will also help me to lose some of the extra pounds that I can't seem to shake, that I am fairly convinced may be the result of driving for the past 18 months...

If anybody reading this entry knows anybody within 1 mile of Lloyd Center who needs a temporary room-mate, feel free to forward this ad:


I am moving to China this late autumn, and need to save money.

To that end, I am selling my car, getting a bike, and ditching most of my stuff.

I am a 32 year old male, with a full-time accounting job in the Lloyd Center area. I need an inexpensive temporary arrangement near my office, basically just a place to eat and sleep for a few months.

I spend most of my free time studying at the internet cafe or working out at the gym, and am friendly, quiet, and tidy.

[edit: due to noise problems at my current building, I would gladly occupy a place as early as July 1.]

Thanks,
JT

TESOL certificate course is paid for, and begins in a few weeks. Tomorrow, I will submit passport application and fees.

Martial arts classes continue to get more challenging. I recently emailed my Sifu to ask if it would be a good idea for me to focus on one style as opposed to two, as I have recently been having some trouble with the Tai Chi training, while I seem to be improving quickly with the Tang Lang Quan training. While his response was helpful and encouraged me to continue taking both, I also got the slight impression that he seemed to think the question was a way for me to ask him for permission to bail on my commitments.

In any case, it seems my determination to pursue both has redoubled, and somehow, within the course of a few days, I have filled many of the gaps I was perceiving in my Tai Chi. Hopefully, it will continue.

At the recommendation of Marz, I read "Living the Martial Way : A Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think" by Forrest E. Morgan. There is a lot of good information in here for advantageous ways that a modern M.A. student can approach their training. On the other hand, much of the tone seems like the book was intended for idiots. A more in-depth review may follow after a re-read. Presently, I am finishing up the articles on my teachers' website, at www.i-chuan.net .

In other (somewhat related) news, I keep getting offers to review books from various publishing houses. This is rather odd, as I wrote all of two reviews for www.oregonminoritybusiness.com , neither of which were in the genre of any of the offerings I have received so far...

( Today's review offer is for a novel... )

It is pretty simple. All you do is rank 15 factors in order of personal importance, then grade your present employer on each factor, on a scale of A-F.

There is optional demographic info at the bottom. PLEASE fill it out if you take the survey, as the demos will be what I need for the analysis.

One last thing... the survey is on an excel 2003 worksheet, so you will have to be capable of editing this file type to take the survey.

In interested, please send me an offlist email to frater210@sekhetmaat.com, and I will reply with the file attached.

Thanks in advance for helping me out! To anyone who does, I owe you one.

[edit: in case you didn't assume so already, all info is 100% confidential. No names are attached to any data, and all data collected stays between me and my professor.]

I'm almost finished training at my new job. As of Monday, my trainer will be in charge of payroll for the Chino, CA office, and I will be in charge of all Accounts Payable issues for Hillsboro OR, Chino CA, and Delaware OH.

It's not really that big of a job. I basically come in in the morning, have a cup of coffee, get the morning report of paid items, finish the report of open items from the previous evening, open and distribute the mail, enter utilities, UPS, and freight tracking, record reception of drop shipments, check email periodically to make sure that there isn't any odd task that someone from some other plant whomn I'll probably never meet needs for me to perform (usually shuttling faxes from one office to another, or calling external companies for copies of invoices, etc,) and finally, the thing they probably actualy hired me for:

Invoice Discrepancy Resolutions (IDR's)

These are holds on payments that come frequently, because somebody forgot to cross a t or dot an i, or because somebody coded, priced, quantified, etc, incorrectly. Sometimes it's because stuff gets scheduled for payment before it's been received, sometimes it's just because somebody has to approve a payment that is out of the automatic approval range, sometimes it is just because the people who sent the IDR don't now how to do their job, and they just need someone to give them detailed instructions on what to do so they can feel secure in pushing the buttons.

These are really what take up the most of my time. The reason I am getting up to speed on the routine functons of the job is so I will have maximum available time for resolving these discrepancies. It's actually kind of fun, and I like knowing that people with power are relying on me to instruct them as to the proper means of exercising it. It is a position I've always felt myself suited for, and a handy avenue toward eventually holding that power myself.

The other cool thing about this job is that it is getting me out of debt quickly. As of today, I have 75% of all my personal debt paid and, according to MS Money, by the end of the year I will have no personal debt whatsoever, no commercial debts except the very old ones, new furniture, and a new desktop system. At the end of 12 months, I will have a savings of about $9000, on top of maintaining SML/USGL dues, a health club membership, membership in a kung fu club, spa membership, cummunity college tuition, a cell phone and a land line, ample groceries, regular entertainment, and a roof over my head.

I knew there was a good reason for all of my excesses. They have proven to me the value of frugality.

in other news, I have been spending a lot of time in the back yard, swinging around the clubs. My nunchaku technique is getting pretty good! I'm almost to the point where I can match the speed and fluidity of Bruce Lee's unforgettable flourish from that scene in Enter the Dragon, where he subsequently wiped out about 20 guards. Yesterday afternoon, M and I went to Choi's Martial Arts Supply and picked me up a 3-sectioned staff. The woman behind the counter gave us a flyer for a tournament at the Oregon Convention Center, and encouraged me to enter it.

"Um, I have no formal training. I'm getting pretty good with the nunchak', but this is actually the first time I've ever touched a 3-sectioned staff..."

"Oh, well that must take some, uh, confidence"

I think she meant to say stupidity, but I'm doing okay so far. Since yesterday, I've put in a total of about 4 hours practicing with them, and I have tentatively gained some confidence in maintaining momentum in one direction along one plane at a time, and changing direction with a bit of a pause. These clubs have a lot of inertia, so it is of the utmost that you stop them at the chain points, and use a soft, padded area of your body. I haven't hit myself much because I'm being very careful, but even just getting tapped with these guys has raised a couple bumps and bruises on my knee, elbow, and the back of my head. Of course, it could just mean that I need to get into better shape. In any case, coming back into the house after a good session, nursing my bruises and feeling my upper body get tighter and bulkier, and feeling like I'm really accomplishing something with my body, is well worth it. Also, just 4 hours of training with the 3 sectioned staff has informed my nunchaku routine immensely. I taught myself a couple of new moves, and the weight difference between the two weapons make the nunchaku feel almost like toys. As a result, my speed and accuracy has increased noticably.

Anyway, M and I will probably go to the tournament, just to watch. Maybe when I get better and have some actual interactive training behind me, I'll sign up to compete. For now, I am quite satisfied with the level of increase on all fronts...

Home Movies

Dr. Katz

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Sealab 2021

Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast

Cartoon Planet

The Brak Show

Inuyasha

2x2=Shinobuden

Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl

Ashita no Joe

Aishiteru ze Baby

OH! The Super Milk-Chan Show!

and a bunch of other stuff that I'm not going to bother listing at this point...

What will I watch tonight???

However, that has given me some time to look around at the course schedule, and get a feel not only for what I want to do this quarter, but what I want to do overall.

It looks like, even with transfer credits from WSU, I'll be in school for about 7 years if I pursue the following schedule:

2005-2007: Associate of Science Oregon Transfer-Business Degree (ASOT-Business) program at PCC
2007-2009: International Business Studies Certificate (ISBC) program at PSU
2009-2012/13: Business and Law (JD/MBA) Program at U of Oregon

The ASOT program may only take a year and a half, as there are about 24-30 credits of the top of my head that should transfer, and it is a 90 credit program. I am not sure if I will be able to take the paralegal certificate program as originally planned, since it requires an AAS (which doesn't transfer) and has very little transferrability from the courses I would take for the ASOT.

However, the ASOT will get me into PSU as a junior in their Business school. The ISBC program has other requirements in addition to a regular BS in Business Admin, but once I finish it, I should have laid most of the foundation for ensuring my success in Japan, when that day comes.

The JD/MBA program seems to be exactly what I was envisioning as the crown of my education. Between it and the ISBC, it is almost a perfect match for my vision of becoming an international business law consultant.

I think I'm off to a good start. In a couple weeks, I'll finish the Principles of Accounting class with a 3.8. This is a little shy of the mark, but it has been pointed out to me by a couple of people that this should be expected, as I was job-hunting and acclimating to re-entering the workforce after 18 months of unemployment.

Anyway, next quarter I will take 6 credits, and if I make at least a 3.5, I'll schedule 9-12 credits for the following quarter, depending on what I can handle.

Update: Registration is complete. I am scheduled to take BA212 and BA205. I wanted to take BA226 or BA242, but wasn't sure which. However, since both classes are full, the dilemma was resolved with no participation required on my part. I'll be quicker to the punch next quarter and probably take both, along with BA213.

I-Ching Hopscotch:

I was in a huge park, and there was this long hopscotch course. Each square was a hexagram from the I-Ching, and the order of the hexagrams was such that the first square was all yang lines, and as you went it became more yin, until the last square was all yin lines. As I floated-hopped through the course, the world became hazier and less distinct, as objects and elements of the park began to disappear.

By the time I was at the last few squares, most of the world was consumed by a grey fog, and I could barely see the hexagrams under my feet. As I hopped onto the last square, everything was gone, and I was simply floating in blackness.

I don't know much about the I-Ching, so please forgive any lack of understanding of the system this dream may betray.

Petting a Porcupine:

I was hanging out at some friends house (don't know who they were,) and one of them kept a lot of exotic pets. One of them was kind of like a porcupine, but acted more like a cat. I didn't realize that it was dangerous, so I invited it to come sit in my lap, and I petted it for a while, as I was taking in the rest of my surroundings in sort of an offhand and absentminded way. Eventually the porcupine got up and left, and I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, as I am allergic to cats and tend to wash my hands after petting them so I don't get their fur or dander in my eyes, as I am a compulsive eye-rubber.

When I got to the sink and looked down at my hands, I noticed that they were full of thick quills. We're not talking surface wounds here, but deep punctures that had complicated the muscles and tendons of my hand. I stood there and pulled them all out, wondering how the hell I could have not noticed them before. As I pulled them out, a cloudy pink fluid drained from the wounds, sort of a mixture of blood and pus. There was some pain, but I was mostly astonished at how I could have let it happen.

After I came back out of the bathroom, the porcupine followed me everywhere, and kept trying to get in my lap so I would pet it some more. The people at the house seemed to think it was pretty funny, and joked about my new friend.

Damn it, there's more, and I hope I remember it, because last night was a great night of dreaming.

Note: Ice cream was consumed shortly before retiring. All of my most active dreaming sessions are on nights when I eat ice cream shortly before bedtime.

phosphorella

( In no particular order )

After careful consideration (and a check of their lj to make sure they haven't already done it,) I will send this to:
allisonmeyer, felisarcanum, glass_obsidian, ladyghost316, sororkisar, and vanitybltch.

I am in the process of narrowing my focus, so I need to be a little more discerning about whose personal lives I read about on a daily basis.

If you have been removed and belong to one of the above groups, or are a long-distance friend that would like to re-establish contact on a regular basis, let me know, and I'll either re-add you or put you on a friends filter that will still allow you to view protected posts.