Did you Need an Update?

So here I am again, the summer is finally here for me and I haven't a single care in the world. Life is looking pretty good these days - I'm with my family again, working on a project I feel passionately about, seeing my friends and the beach... I even lost a couple of pounds :)

The dates of my arrival and departure from America have been established - I'm leaving on the 21st of August and returning home on the 15th of May. I'm hoping that I can travel with a couple of guys also participating in the program, who are flying to Pennsylvania. Poor guys will probably have to arrive in Philadelphia and then spend another couple of hours getting to their cities. Thankfully my final destination IS Philadelphia, so my flight will only last... about 12-15 hours. Oh, God.

I'm not yet thinking about what I'm going to pack, in fact I'm dreading the thought of doing so, because I know how hard that will be. But that is coming for me and I'll probably tell you how that goes.

In other news, I joined Google+! I'm left with great impressions, but I don't use it that much yet, mainly because none of my friends has climbed aboard. I think joining the network still requires an invitation, so if anyone needs one, just say the word!

My God, I am epicly failing at being a regular blogger, aren't I? I looked over my blog account and I noticed there are at least 5 or 6 postings that I've started and not yet completed so I guess at one point I can submit them all at once, just to catch up.

I notice a tendency of me writing a post in this blog every time I have finals. It's just that this specific method of procrastination gives me the illusion that I'm actually doing something useful - because I'm producing something and not just mindlessly scrolling through Cracked or Memebase. It doesn't take away from the fact that I'm still not doing anything University-related but... whatever, I can slack off until the night before the exam. Yeah, they're gonna LOVE me at Penn.

The BYLP thing is going smoothly, though. I am going to my visa interview on the 17th and the 25-26th are the two days the BYLP team and I are spending in the mountains for something of a team-building thing, I guess. And don't get me wrong now, but I find this a little puzzling. I'm never going to see most of these people - we're all headed for different parts of the U.S. and it's not like we're even flying on the same date, so why the need for team-building? Nevertheless, I would never decline an invitation to a free party in a four-star hotel, so I told them to count me in.

I hope I can offer more substantial material the next time I check-in but looking over the tabs in my browser that would be a stupid promise to make.

Oh, and here's a song for you to listen, because I seem to think someone actually cares about the music I like.

[Insert Philadelphia joke here]

I was really tempted to make an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference in the title of this post but I resisted the urge (read: got lazy) and am going to try to be serious for two minutes.

These past couple of days I've been desperately trying to get rid of my bad habit of falling asleep late at night. So last night I'm really optimistic about this new goal and go to close my laptop at 12 A.M. and start dreaming of YouTube stars when I notice that I have an email. It's the BYLP program again, telling me they've received an invitation for me... from UPenn. UPENN! Like, in University of Pennsylvania, the fifth best school in the nation and twelfth in the world?

I feel like I should include a disclaimer here. I am not bragging about my being accepted at UPenn, mainly because I find it really hard to believe that someone like me could be taken seriously as an applicant, let alone as a student there. I believe the BYLP team members are the ones responsible for that opportunity and I have little to do with the whole thing. I just think I got incredibly lucky and, upon arriving there, will just be begging everyone around to please, please let me enjoy this while I can.

Which is not exactly that much - it's only a year, after all. It's not like I'll have the opportunity to stay there. I'm simply a guest student - I won't get any credits, won't obtain a degree of any sort. I'm just going to be there for the experience. And because the BYLP Program is paying for everything. Seriously, those guys rock.

Eerie Indiana?

So I got accepted to Indiana University of Pennsylvania this week. I was going absolutely crazy waiting for that letter to come already and finally knowing my placement is a huge relief. But it wouldn't be me if something didn't almost screw me over.

How I got to be informed that I would be going to IUP next year was a rather interesting story. I was notified that I would receive news about the university on April 1st with the possibility of a delay. My friend got hers on April 4th and I was still oblivious. So when April 8th came around I got sick of waiting and asked my program manager if there was some sort of problem. She replied to me about an hour later telling me that they did send me my letter on April 1st and she doesn't know what could have gone wrong and maybe it went into my Spam folder. She sends me a copy of the letter telling me that IUP is waiting for me in September and that if I still want to participate I have to print the contract they've attached, sign it, scan it and send it back to them by April 8th, 5 P.M. the latest. I look at the clock and it's 4:30. I don't have a printer or a scanner at home so I grab my jacket and storm out of my dorm with my hair wet as hell. Fortunately we had a copy center about ten minutes from home so I managed to do everything by 4:55. So another day goes by where Ren barely avoids being screwed out of a sweet deal.

I spent the next day and a half researching the university. It's not a bad place, especially for a poor unfortunate soul like me. I would have liked it better if the nearby town was bigger and the weather was nicer but apart from that, it's a great university that I will be happy to be a part from for the next academic year.

I started this blog with the intention of sharing the things that interest me and I believe that next year a lot of those things will have to do with my time in America. I can only hope that the perspective of a foreigner exploring this new and unfamiliar culture will be interesting to read about.

Make your own personalized magazine with Feedly

So a couple of days ago I was looking for a way to waste a couple of minutes on useless stuff when I stumbled upon a site that ended up taking 2 hours of my time.

And no, I'm talking about a porn site, although they tend to take just as long. I mean, have you seen those places? They're all sorts of fun! If you’re 18.

Anyway, that site isn't as much a site as it is a web application - meaning you have to install it as a part of your browser before you get to use it. It gives you the opportunity to organize and read the blogs you follow in a really cool and easy way. I think they're introducing it as a magazine, which is really attractive to me as a user and quite accurate, as well. Because a lot of the blogs tend to have much in common with magazines, don't they? Pictures, words... all that stuff. Anyways, feedly.com was, for me, a total change in the way I view blogs. I used to check for new entries daily using bookmarks in Opera and that did the trick for a while… if you're following 10 blogs or so. For more, you have to have something better. Some choose bloglovin' for fashion blogs, others turn to Google Reader or other web services. But Feedly is, in my opinion, the best choice of all.

Like many sites of its kind, Feedly lets you pick your favorite blogs and subscribe to them. It's all very easy - when you install the extension, a little feedly icon appears on the bottom right corner of your browser, which lets you follow a blog at any time. Another really cool feature is the "Save it for later" one, which gives you the chance to save a page and go back to it when you have the chance. I only wish there could be folders or some kind of categorizing tool that would let me divide my saved pages into different topics. But I'm sure that will be available in time.

In short, Feedly is a great blog management browser extension that I recommend to everyone who wants a more attractive and user-friendly reading experience. Be sure to try it and tell me what you think!

And I'm Like, Haiku!

Okay, so this is the funniest thing I've seen all week.

Probably because I am easily impressed by Haiku poems and whenever I see one that's even remotely witty, I am totally blown away. So I figure this is as good a time as any to share with you a couple of my favorite ones that I've found around the web:

I hate you Haiku

You are very hard to do

Go back to Japan

Haikus are easy

But sometimes they don't make sense

Refrigerator

Who would waste their time

Writing a haiku poem

Well, that would be me

I wake, reluctant

Too cold to get out of bed

But I need to pee

And because I'm a sucker for cats, here are two cat haikus that I really liked:

You never feed me

Perhaps I'll sleep on your face

That will sure show you

The rule for today

Touch my tail, I shred your hand

New rule tomorrow

Now entering Nerdist

When it comes to podcasts, I am oblivious. I don't know that many, and if I do, I don't follow them regularly because listening to people simply talking is just too hard for someone with ADD to do. But for me, Nerdist is an exception. A wonderful, awesome exception that I am incredibly happy to have come across.

How I've come to be a regular listener to Nerdist is I have trouble falling asleep in silence. Usually I just leave the TV on during the night but me and my roommate have decided to get rid of that habit this year so I had nothing to turn to. Enter Chris Hardwick and his fellow comedians to entertain me through interviews with awesome people who probably only true nerds would appreciate. Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, the Mythbusters, Donald Glover, Joel McHale, Allison Brie and Danny Pudi are just some of those. For some reason the show seems to want to go through the entire cast of Community, which I have absolutely nothing against. Donald and Allison were a pleasure to listen to, and I'm sure that when I get to Joel and Danny I will be equally pleased. But I digress.

What makes the interviews so special is that they don't seem like interviews at all. They're just like a regular chat between friends on all kinds of topics. Chris and his colleagues have the amazing ability to keep the conversation going without making it look forced. And they're all such funny people - I have actually laughed out loud on several occasions, and that is quite the rarity for me. It gets particularly weird when I use public transportation because I can't hold my laughter in even then which always costs me a couple of worried looks.

But I don't mind it at all if that is the price for being this entertained. It's just a pleasure to have so many interesting and funny people in one place talking about things we have all wondered at some time. And when they have so much fun spending time with each other, how can you not have fun with them?