I'm done!!!

After 1 year, EUR50,000+, tons of work, I'm finally DONE! Classes ended at different times for everybody, but mine finished at 5pm on Monday. (well, officially, I had to leave class at 4:30pm to catch a plane)

In true tradition, I've left right away for vacation, travelling with friends to Kunming, China, with a stopover in Hong Kong. I'm in HK right now, after visiting the city for 1 hr, sleeping for 6, and then checking in to my next flight. Kinda cool, I had a chance to eat some true HK dishes, admire the skyline, all in time to come back to the airport before the airport express train shuts down.

It's strange, because I don't feel any different than when I started, except maybe a little more disciplined, and a little bit (ok, a lot) tired. It doesn't quite seem final yet for me, especially given the job situation.

At least graduation comes by on the 17th, I get to travel in the region for a bit, and should be back in the US by January.

Top Gear and Roasted mini-crab snacks
Today is my last weekend of real homework/classes!! And so, while slacking off in school, my roommate and I were watching Top Gear, the BBC show about cars, and this episode was about racing through Japan on public transit vs. a car. In the show, the host, Jeremy, was given some Japanese snacks to eat while he drove, including some mini-crabs. I thought it was a joke, until my roommate came back with the exact same snacks from the grocery store next door.

It's gotta be the weirdest things I've ever eaten. They are actually real crabs (small thumbsized ones), that seem to be fried, and then there's a sweet sauce with sesame seeds on it, like typical Japanese snacks. I thought it'd be really hard to eat, but it's a bit like softshelled crabs. It's SO wierd to look at these things, because they're real crabs, they have arms, eyes, and everything. Even if you bite halfway into one, there's "stuff" on the inside of the main shell.



And I have to say, it's kinda tasty. Crab flavored, as you might expect.

More Cabaret Videos - (inspired by the Japanese movie Battle Royale)

Incredibly hilarious, although there might be some inside jokes that aren't as well appreciated, but plenty of references and physical comedy. Read the movie notes on YouTube to see the references...The shaven-head guy giving out weapons (and dancing at the end) is an American statistics professor here. As you can see, he's quite fit, and apparently, he was at a bar in Singapore, where another guy was trying to pick a fight with him, giving a hard time, making nasty comments to the girl with him, etc, expecting that he was some fancy ex-pat. The guy asked him what he did, and he said "I'm actually a US Navy SEAL, on assignment to provide combat training to the Singapore Armed Forces". Apparently, it was so believable that the harassing guy shut up and was trying to become his best friend!