Expect Me When You See Me

I dreamt last night that I was born into a low caste on a massive ship traveling through space who had instituted illegal population restrictions by banishing any non-planned children to a lower cast of servants, so despite being smart and having my talents (in computer programming, amongst other things) being utilized well by the aristocrats I served, I was denied going any further in society (there were a lot of seemingly arbitrary reasons someone could be relegated to a lower caste). This pissed me off and I started searching for ways to change the system (literally by changing the computer system) which drew the attention of the rebellious underground who were made up of various high ranking ninja from Naruto. Tsunade was unsure if she should employ me, but Kakashi persuaded her to give me a chance to demonstrate my skills, so I snuck into the central computer chamber which kinda looked like Darth Vader's meditation chamber only with really low gravity and planted some of the commands they wanted in the computers. I woke up around the time when they were pointing out that there were a lot more rebels than I knew of and it was going to stay that way in case any of us were captured.

Dad and I are off to visit my family in the midwest tomorrow. My car needed to be returned to Wisconsin anyway, so we're combining it with seeing my family who I haven't visited since before I started my Phd.

I had a dream the other day that I was living in this weird, semi-autonomous village, and my job meant that I sort of guided people around and got them food/stuff that couldn't be found within the compound, etc. And somehow I ran into Kit Harrington because I had to help him out while he was visiting to do some promo work for GOT. And we got to be friends and I flirted a bit with him in between developing some sort of contraband ring for smuggling cool stuff into the compound (which was a nice enough seeming place even if it looked like how Disney envisioned the future... I don't remember why I was running circles around the authorities. I guess I was bored?).

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Weds here so I took Weds off and went to see Mockingjay which I enjoyed, but partially because even though it followed the book, it was a lot less boring than the book. I then went on a sock hunt since two friends of mine requested fuzzy animal socks. Cute, trendy socks are one of the more fun trends here in Korea, especially since they only cost a dollar or two and have some of the most interesting patterns. I sometimes can't wear the too small ones but other than that, the skies the limit when it comes to patterns. I found a pair that had little 8 bit stormtroopers, lightsabers and artoos all over them. And one covered in weird food. I also picked up some fuzzy iron man socks for myself and found my friends panda socks. All in all a good haul. I'm going to own so many more socks after living here *L*

Our Thanksgiving dinner was catered from the local US military base and I was in heaven to eat some turkey (ham/pork are pretty much the only meats you get consistently in Korea... chicken is available but it's almost always fried). Their stuffing was pretty good too, though the mashed potatoes sucked. And it was so nice to have pumpkin pie. It was with the other Fulbright researchers so it was also nice to catch up with some people. Since it was held in our building, I took a plate of leftovers home and had it on actual Thanksgiving evening after spending the day working at a museum on the other side of Seoul. I think the director wishes I could work there all the time *L*

I have a scholarship app due before I leave for India which I'm trying to get done. I'm glad I stopped in at my local bank on weds though because it turns out that my atm card won't work in India, but luckily they switched me over to one that would work (and which hilariously has the words 'good luck' written on it). The phone company gave me the run around when I tried to ask them about using my phone in India so I've decided to give up and not worry about being without a working phone for a week. My friend who I'm traveling with will have a phone at least.

I also finished my work at the SNU library yesterday. While I still have to organize my data, it's nice to not have to travel there every other day. That trip is really a pain (3 subway transfers, a bus ride and a 10 min walk). In order to celebrate, I went with a friend to a local jjimjilbang which is literally like two blocks away. I was surprised how nice it was considering it only had two floors and was a local. But it had three different common area saunas, two in the naked areas, and three hot pools which weren't quite the right temperature but weren't bad. My friend and I first went in the common area saunas. Or rather, I went in the rock salt sauna while she tried the others since I can't do charcoal and wood saunas due to my asthma. Then we went in the bath areas, tried out the 'lie down on a slab of heated rock while surrounded by semi-precious stone' sauna, and alternated between different pools. We also were interrogated by this cute little girl who decided to try out all her English on us. Then we headed out into the common area again and bought fruit smoothies. The kiwi one was delicious. We tried out the massage chairs which were great on my back even if they were made for people much taller. However, the squeezing of the legs was actually rather painful and I pulled my legs out (my calves are actually really sore today from it). Then we moved over and laid on infrared heated glass while chatting and vaguely watching tv. Around 9:30, we finally pulled ourselves away from the heat and headed back into the bath area for another long soak before a full body and hair wash (we'd just washed our bodies before and kept our hair out of the water). Then we made our way home, insanely relaxed and sleepy. I went to sleep an hour early and slept for nearly 10 hrs. I was carrying a lot of tension I just didn't realize until it was gone. This might have been more relaxing than my monthly sports massage. I can't decide *lol* Since it's so close, I know where I'll be going when I'm craving some heat.

The Friday before last, I went home for dinner than headed over to the Seoul Lantern Festival since I figured I should see it before it disappeared for the year (it runs for 3 weeks but the weekend before last was the last few days). They set up the lanterns so they float above the river which I love to walk near whenever I'm in the area so it was nice to visit but wow was it really crowded when I got there. My pics are here. I was rather amused that the China-made lanterns were archaeology related, but I think the fish ones impressed me the most.

I had expected to work on my scholarship app on Tuesday, but I had an asthma attack at 3am. I resisted using my inhaler as long as possible, but I couldn't stop coughing so I gave up and used it. This, of course, led to my heart pounding madly for awhile while I played games on my phone, and my not getting to sleep until 5:30am. I turned off my alarm for the next day since there was no way I was waking up at 9am to get to the SNU library and slept in until 11. I awoke to a text asking me if my evening was free from one of the fulbrighter's who works in the fulbright office. He had food poisoning so he wanted to know if I could cover his class teaching North Korean defectors English. I said yes, even though it caused flashbacks to teaching English in Japan. I at least wasn't nervous because I've done classes like this hundreds of times. Getting there took over 1 1/2hrs though at least there was kimbap and tea and someone sharing a fried chicken when we got there. Then it was teaching three high school girls for two hours. The games I know which can be played on the fly are still really popular amusingly enough. And they served us sweet buns in the middle which was apparently a new thing. Then another long trip home before showering and calling my friend in India to plan our trip a bit more. Not how I expected to spend my day but it was interesting enough as a one off thing.

Dreamt I was an ancient werewolf who had originally been a pale furred wolf at the dawn of time. I was consulted in the modern day on the possibility of creating more/better werewolves but kept to myself that I thought they were going about it all wrong since I had been there when werewolves were created (complete with awesome flashback to how it had happened).

I need to read Greek myths right before bed more often.

I was working with some sort of secret agency that dealt with problems spots around the world in a world where there had been a mild zombie apocalypse and people believed in and used magic. It can't have been much of a zombie apocalypse though because I was traveling alone through the wilderness and I simply kept a sword handy and checked the ground regularly for zombie track, and that seemed enough to make me unworried. (I suspect it's because I know the decay rate of bodies so I find it hard to take zombies seriously after more than a few days of decay.)

I was heading to a huge, renaissance style academy which also doubled as a fine dining restaurant and spa. A professor and his students occupied the lower halls and main courtyard. I watched the lecture, getting more and more annoyed because the professor was teaching physics and chemistry wrong, but using magic to compensate when his demonstrations went wrong. What alarmed me though was that his students seemed especially slavishly devoted to him. I kept an eye on the display while I went to meet my contact from the agency, who turned out to be Ian McKellan's Gandalf in a modern day suit and with a modern name. He was very in character, which is indeed rather annoying when he wants you to do something. He hinted that the professor was part of a wider network, and that I had full discretion to stay a few days and figure out a way to take him down which wouldn't start a chain reaction with other cult-science leaders. I'd been focused on a different problem, which I could only investigate by going back to the big city, so I was pretty annoyed when he forced me to agree to do this first, then disappeared during the second course of the meal, leaving me to explain his disappearance, and, oh yes, the bill. Good food though.

Well, on Sunday, I decided to go explore the arboretum since the weather was beautiful for once (it's been a very rainy June). I was quite happy to wander around the area until I felt a sharp stab of pain. I looked down at my legs (I was wearing capris) and discovered there were at least six big bugs feasting on my ankle. I brushed them off, leaving blood smeared all over my ankle, brushed off another one on my leg and decided to cut my walk short. I got back to the car and used a wet wipe to wipe the blood off, leaving small bite marks, but nothing more. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn't seem to be allergic to them, and looked them up on my phone to discover that the bugs had been deer flies. All was fine until the next day when each bite (and there were several more than the bugs I'd seen) began to swell, and itch, and cause me pain. Turns out I was very allergic to them, it just took my body while to figure it out since it had never encountered deer flies before. It felt almost exactly like being bitten by bed bugs again (which I am terrified of), so on top of the loss of sleep due to itchiness and pain, there was also loss of sleep due to anxiety. Luckily, I had some steroid cream around from my last encounter with poison ivy so treatment with that every day has caused the bites to finally start shrinking today, but it has been a rough week despite me not doing much of anything.

I also apparently have anxiety about Hannibal since I kept dreaming something horrible happened in last night's episode (which I can't watch on Thursday because I have no television so I wait until Friday to watch on Hulu). I'm going to watch it now so at least any anxiety dreams will be accurate.

Last night I dreamt I was in a zombie world long after the zombie apocalypse where the zombie virus had mutated to allow some zombies to talk and control themselves (though mostly they just pretended to be nice and then ate you when you're back was turned ie smart zombies), while others just remained normal shambling zombies. There were huge debates on the rights of the smart zombies and one smart one tried to befriend me, but I got sick of watching my back around her so I headed out into the wilds. I was climbing over a high chain link fence stained with blood when I woke up though whether I was climbing into an area filled with zombies or getting away from one remained up to debate. All in all, I think I've had my fill of zombie apocalypses for awhile.

A few days ago my dreams were about how difficult it was to camp on a battlefield after an epic battle with orcs and the Sauron's armies. Fighting beside Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli was much more fun than zombies, damnit.

This weekend I went to several different stores in order to find new winter boots since the soles literally fell off my old winter boots (luckily, only just after I stepped out the door). They had served me well for seven years so not bad, but such a pain to find boots that had ankle support, were waterproof, didn't have heels, and fit my wide feet. I always feel so jealous of men when I boot shop since they have so many options and I have so very few *sigh* Anyway, I finally found some and they were even on sale so yay.

My other occupation this weekend besides uni work (which you should assume is always being done) was cooking. I first set out to make a huge batch of matzo ball soup, but after I had mixed everything but the matzo meal into the matzo ball mixture, I realized I didn't have enough matzo meal so I shrugged, mixed it all together anyway and made matzo meal soup instead. It tastes the same anyway, just a different texture. Then I made a whole pound of lentils mixed with garlic, fried onions, lemon juice and various spices. I'll be eating that for quite awhile. And then, finally, on Saturday night I spent an hour or two prepping a beef stew. It was the first time I used a crock pot in my life so I was kinda anxious when I set it to low and went to sleep. I actually ended up waking up at 7am to go check on it, but went back to sleep once I saw it was fine (also, it smelled delicious). It tastes fantastic, though if I make it again I will put in slightly less wine and slightly more potatoes. All this food will feed me for a week or two. Does anybody know if I can freeze stew?

Back in NJ. Happy to avoid the blizzard that is raging in Wisc.

Training tonight was a review of what everyone had learnt over the year which was good for me since I hadn't been in NJ for most of the year. Jack wasn't there, nor was it all that crowded but it was nice to see most of the regulars. Things I will have to show people back in Wisc are as follows:

Kaname and spreading out to take space. This 'technique' involved going to the outside of the punching arm and manuvering it using your right hand/arm. You got your shoulder under their shoulder, and stood at a 45 degree angle from where their feet were. Then, simulatenously, your left arm spread out to take the space in front of their chest and beyond, your right took all the space around their right arm, and your left foot went back into the space bt their legs closest to their right leg. Your body is the pivot point for the kaname here, so your leg isn't just going strait back, but your hips are twisting forward on the left leaving your hips cocked even though your leg is back by the end of the technique. Hard to explain and demonstrate *L*

Another was an odd 'guiding of the thumb' tech where the person punched, you softly caught the punch on the inside, then gently as possible, guided their thumb in its weakest direction, kind of a sharp arc outwards, then a gentle one around. Very different when the other person crosspunches instead. Then you either have to get the angle perfect, or you go for height or near the floor to get them down. Works best when the other person fights back.

A simple technique was going in when the person punched, taking all the space around their chest then walking straight through them on the opposite side from their punching hand. Easy so long as you don't stop. Training partner found it hard to do bc my height made it so easy to just try to man handle my neck around instead, she kept getting distracted by it and stopping.

Another was catching the space around a person's elbow before they could throw their stomach punch. The key to the timing was to get them to commit to the attack, but take the space where the elbow would be before they wound up for the punch. Since that's pretty much a split second window, getting the timing right was a bitch and I managed it maybe once or twice.

I had to teach one, so I just did going under the punching person's arm and catching the shoulder before bringing them down in their weakest direction. Then they showed something Jack had done very similar the week before which was to take not the space around the shoulder, but almost within it. You literally took the space under and around the shoulder blade by rolling up from underneath after going to the same spot I was, then once you very obviously had their balance and space, you could bring them to the ground (very hard to roll out of).

Final technique, was the kaname applied to the sword, which made it into a sort of horizontal spiral. You caught the other sword strike on the middle of your sword, then brought it in a giant, shallow circle around, increasingly controlling it with the tip of your sword since it slides down from the middle while you circle. If you do it right, you don't get hit as you come in, then the second circle brings the sword behind their head and you're done. I swear it makes sense when you see it *L*

In other news, had a dream this morning that I was in Korea, leading some sort of uni club on a trip to this mountain lake. In the dream, I'd watched a flood warning if there was a major storm the water would surge downstream and flood all of us who lived along the lake. In the dream, I told this to one of the young women I was travelling with and we decided to head away from the storm and river to this beachfront area. We went too far though and had to find a way back to our group, but then we got separated when a Christian bus driver gave me a free ride... well, it got complicated.

Omg, I was arguing politics in my sleep (I grabbed someone's chin and pulled it up so I could look them in the eye... I think I have to stop taking my visual cues off of Loki...), and I was stuck in a polling line even though I'd already voted ages ago. It was like being stuck at the DMV, only everyone wanted your opinion on Obama.

In other news, Dad drove home on Monday and was lucky enough that the power was turned on in his town while he was driving back. He had no flooding in his basement, though a tree had fallen and crushed a car just a block or two down, and of course he lost everything in his fridge. Not bad overall though.

My dream this morning was quite long and involved. Me and a bunch of other people gained super powers from these sketchy experiments in ghettos that altered the space surrounding these experiments (a good way to discover them was to accidentally stick your hand through a wall where they were happening). I ended up coordinating a bunch of these powerful people as we tried to discover who was behind the experiments and shut them down since the resulting powers weren't always living-friendly. This was kinda a post-apocalyptic world too cause I remember running down city streets with wolves running right next to us. My power was that I was telepathic, enhanced toughness, and the phasing through matter ability that all of us had to a greater or lesser degree. We were running an op trying to get into this cordoned off, ruined area to stop this one experiment. I couldn't go in because I was too well known, so instead I 'convinced' this unassuming looking scientist to go and he got through fine with me guiding him. Meanwhile, I had two of my men (who were those guys from the Hawaii Five-O reboot whose names I don't know because I've never seen the show and I expect they only made it in my dreams cause I saw them on tumblr before I went to sleep) distract the opposing forces by getting captured, tied to a pole, and tortured while wise-cracking until I gave the all clear and they wiped the floor with them. Scientist guy turned off the experiment by sticking his hand through the roof which gave him the phasing power we all had and he was heading out of there when I woke up.

Bujinkan was extra long yesterday because we're losing our main teacher which is sad because he's the only guy who outranks me here. The training was interesting with cross blocks and various take downs, then doing the same thing with knives and hung bo. We switched at every new technique so when I switched to this one guy who isn't usually there, I wasn't really expecting anything other than judging the other guy's level to see if he needed any help or if I could relax or even if he could help me. He hadn't caught some of it so I walked him through it. Then it was demonstrated again, we go back to training and the guy just starts trying to whip through the technique in such a way that every time he did, my fist connected with his head (not hard because I'm nice). So every time, I'd stop and tell him to wait for the second punch. Three times in a row he didn't listen, and then he stops and goes, "Look, I only get here once every two months so let me do what I want." I stared at him and considered my options. Jack's way I would have punched him as hard as I could in the head to show that he was doing it wrong. I could have just let him do it wrong until we switched partners (because any respect I had for him had just been lost - maybe in other martial arts you don't help your training partner but buyu has a strong tradition of doing so and it's how you get better. Not that your training partner is always right, but most of the time they are, and ignoring them is pretty much like saying, 'I'm not going to do this part of the training.') So my third option was standing nearby in the form of an extra person who was watching the nearby pair train, and I switched out with him so I would neither have to hurt the idiot, or encourage the guy's bad habits. He thanked me for my patience after the class, but I really have no idea what that means so yeah.

Dreamt I was training here in Minnesota only in a much larger place than we do, and that the teacher, E.'s wife was sitting on the side and when he corrected me I fixed it immediately and when he (to my dread) kept talking, his wife told him off that I already got it. (You can tell what I really want to happen, huh?)

After about a month of his babbling though, I think I've finally pinned down E.'s philsophy vs Jack's. See, E. is training for that fateful day when ninjas drop out of his cieling and try to kill him, or when he's targetted by a mob boss and his martial artist thugs. I have no doubt he will overcome them should that happen. His philosophy is that if you're ready for that, then you're ready for anything. Jack's philosophy is that 99% of the time you're going to be fighting someone who is either an amateur or is trained in a lesser art. In point of fact, I don't think Jack plans for you to be attacked by other ninja at all since to get high ranking in Bujinkan you're either thoughtful and not going to be acting as an assassin or thug, or you're high ranking and you're not very good (*L*). There are other places teaching ninjitsu in this world, but they fall into the lesser art categories. E. thinks there are other martial art styles out there that can overcome Bujinkan style, while Jack is confident that there aren't any other styles that are better, though some styles have one or two specific moves that are hard for the human body to defend against no matter what you train in (this is why, though I have been taught to fight against a Muy Thai fighter, I will run very far away if I ever have to face one).

E. doesn't understand that his uke's are going to move as he would want them to because that's the role of the uke. You can fight back, but you're there so the sensei can show the rest of the class what he wants them to see. The sensei should be capable of demonstrating it no matter what, but a good uke will attack, fight back and reasonably respond as if they don't know what's going to happen. E. spent a lot of Monday's class cackling about how he like's fighting people like me who have good fighting instincts because we're predictable, but his basis of this was from when I was uke-ing for him. He did the technique which got him behind me, and the reasonable thing to do was to turn the other way to meet him. This isn't what I'd do in real life, but my role as uke is not to defeat the sensei, ne? (My actual reaction is 'shit, they got behind me.' *rolls forward, or kicks out backwards or does both*). Jack calls me tricky because I naturally, without thinking about it, tend to force people to do their techniques perfectly in order to do things or to change their techniques when my shoulder bends in ways most other people's don't. However, unless I'm fighting someone of a high rank or am told to fight back, I don't bother doing it deliberately because it's disheartening to never have your technnique work when you first start training. I basically let whoever I'm training with get the technique when they're reached a level of competence I think fits their rank. This is what good training partners do.

E. did make a good point on Monday that you should go with your second instinct in a fight. Discard whatever you thought of first because you probably telegraphed it, and go with whatever you think of second. That's hard to do in a high speed fight, but it's good advice and something to strive for.

Generally though, I think both E. and Jack are correct and approaching the same problem from different angles. E. will indeed be prepared for anything if he trains to fight other ninja. And Jack will be ready for anything because he trains to fight everything, though he is perfectly correct in assuming that you're not going to be fighting a competent martial artist 99% of the time. E. thinks bujinkan has it's flaws. Jack thinks it has it's flaws too, but he's altetered and adapted it enough that it doesn't, for him, have those flaws. Which is perhaps the thing that E. is missing. I remain convinced that E. isn't doing any favors for his students teaching this philosophy though. He has to constantly say, oh, you lower level guys won't be able to do this, or not throw people because their ukemi sucks. Of course, Jack's solution to this at this point in time is to just not train wtih lower level people or at least newbies anymore, but Jack's at a level of seniority where he can do that.

In other news, it rained and thundered last night and all this morning and it was lovely because I can sleep through rain and the lack of light it brings, hence the dream. I have high hopes it will break the hot weather too. *fingers crossed* Korean is going well btw. Aced the first final exam, though of course now we've entered the section of the course I'm not as familar with so it will take more studying to keep up.