17 May 2015

ATL masterplan

It's the day before work, so let's start off with an overly ambitious plan and see how much actually get accomplished aha...

Compulsory:
  • Study for GRE. Ugh I've been trying to avoid standardized testing for so long (see John Oliver) but that would narrow my grad school choices to 3 programs, and 2 of which is at Cambridge. I'm really not confident that I can get in and/or afford to go, so let's get through this hell.
  • Determine topic of bachelor thesis. This should come naturally as I learn more about my work, but will also supplement this with lots of reading other people's thesis. Might as well kill 2 birds with one stone and look up professors at my interested universities along the way too.
Priority:
  • Visit New Orleans. Hopefully taking the train there too. Unsure if I want to go during a quieter (and cheaper) time or to go fro jazz festival.
  • Play Bravery Default & Fire Emblem: Awakening. It's time to get a 3DS for some more variety. 
  • Read more books. Namely finish Vonnegut, more by Murakami and then the Discoworld series. Along with a couple of food writing and some classics that I've been meaning to read since forever. I'm very much in a fiction phase right now. I'd also like to visit a lot of used book stores and find some books on various cultures' mythologies, but it's such a hassle owning physical copies of books. 
  • Learn enough Japanese so I can visit non-touristy areas. Though the eventual goal is to be able to read raws of manga so I don't need to experience antagonizing wait for scanlations to release.
Nice to have, but let's be real, I've been talking about these for a really long time already:
  • Brush up my Chinese, because it's really a shame and extremely disadvantageous to lose a language. My dad will be visiting me, so that will be a good opportunity. But I think the most effective way would be to find an interesting yet easy enough book to read. 
  • Draw more. This appears on my new years resolution every single year and I've made laughably little effort to follow through. But hey at least I packed my oil pastels.
  • Go through and understand The Divine Comedy. I forget where my obsession with this comes from, regardless it's there. Tien promised to go through GEB with me after I'm back, so I'll tackle this by myself. At my aid are Georgetown and Yale. The plan is to dedicate a month or so to this once I'm sick of GRE studying. 
  • Visit San Fran if tickets are cheap. I need to experience this west coast magic, or just to eat at Tartine for all my meals.

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