The upside of hurricanes

So unless you live several feet beneath the earth under a teetering pile of heavy rocks (to which I say, I'm sorry and you better GET THE HECK OUT OF THERE!) or haven't encountered any form of media or other human beings in the past 48 hours, here is your delayed newsflash (although if you're reading this blog over checking the news or looking outside your window, you need to reset your priorities): there was a hurricane this weekend. You're welcome.

Not only was there a hurricane, but it was apparently supposed to bring the apocalypse along with it. Fun!!! Or at least that's what you'd think from all the coverage this Irene character had been getting. I'll be settling down with a good book to read by candlelight once this hullabaloo has passed.. IF I LIVE.

My parents were supposed to get on a flight to Korea last night, but it got delayed until Wednesday. My dad's taking his sabbatical for 10 months over there, doing research with companies, teaching at the university, and generally embracing his full-fledged nerdiness. My mom is going for a couple of weeks to help him move in and make sure his apartment is stocked with more than just ramen packets and peanut butter (left to his own defenses, my dad would have the eating standards of a college frat boy).

So rather than spend the weekend getting ready to leave and wrapping up last-minute errands, my mom closed her store early due to the 'inclement weather' and came home while my dad had a teleconference with his colleagues to tell them about his updated travel plans. This resulted in all five members of my family (including my sister, who came to visit) being in the house together on a Saturday with virtually no plans of leaving it for the first time in a while. Our power was still on but we were anticipating losing it as we listlessly roamed around the house, looking out the window every five minutes to gauge the level of our impending doom. The only foray I made outside was with my sister to get ice cream from the nearby Baskin Robbins -- a must-have commodity during any natural disaster, really.

After we got back, all of us sat down in the kitchen while my grandma placed a steaming hot bowl of spicy broth in the middle. We slowly devoured it, intermittently chatting about the storm-hype, our relatives' health, and (nerd alert!) the efficiency of LED light bulbs. We dug into one of the two quarts of ice cream purchased and let ourselves happily languish around the table. No time-checks, no gotta-go's. We eventually migrated to the living room, where we watched the ongoing news reports of storm preparation and heard the raindrops begin to patter on the roof.

We lost power the next morning and the walls of our house gradually went from a chipper white to ashy gray, then became blanketed in black. As soon as we realized that our lights weren't turning on, my sister and I stared wide-eyed at each other and yelped, "THE ICE CREAM!!!" Racing downstairs, we rapidly distributed bowls to everyone and demanded that they keep scooping before the jamoca almond fudge devolved into a puddle of brownish goop (and THAT'S the proper word usage, Gwyneth). We managed to go pick up a large pizza pie amidst the road detours and brought it back home to have our second meal together this weekend.

I stepped out to go study at a friend's, my last familiar bastion of electricity left in town. Six hours later, I drove home through deserted streets devoid of working street lamps or traffic lights -- the scene, by all means, looked like the eve of a zombie outbreak. Driving past those dark houses was eerie but kind of nice, knowing that the families inside were hunkering down, getting ready to do nothing but sleep. Solidarity, I say! I got home, joined my own, and waited for the storm to pass. Just like everyone else.

The great escape

To remedy my extremely sporadic updating behavior, I'm going to start writing about things that happen during my day, whether they be trivial or earth-shattering (don't expect much of the second). Best wishes to me!

I've been wanting to enroll in an introductory Economics course during my past three years in college but never had room in my schedule to do so, unless I wanted to wake up for a 9:30 a.m. section on Fridays (the thought of which, though obviously thrilling, made me want to carve an imprint of my body in my mattress and burrow among the bits of cotton inside to only emerge for mealtime). I also heard the class involved unnecessary amounts of work and commitment, two items not at the top of the list of Things I Excel At. During the last ten minutes of my registration appointment, however, I found an ECN 203 lecture that only met twice a week during reasonable hours and, from what I heard from a friend in the class, was taught by a harmless, easygoing professor. I happily enrolled.

Now, let me share a little bit about aforementioned friend. Her name is Jaehee, and she is crazy. Not in a would-plead-insanity-in-court kind of crazy (though I wouldn't put it past her), but the more charmingly unfiltered, fearless type who still warrants a raised eyebrow and "WTF?" in her direction every so often. I attended my first class and since the course had started a week earlier, tried to see how I could catch up on the material. I quickly figured out that this wouldn't be happening. Why? There wasn't enough material to actually be caught up on because a) this professor was asked last-minute to teach the course and didn't have a proper schedule of content we'd be covering and b) he spoke with a thick foreign accent that brought the already incomprehensible economic jargon to new heights of incomprehensibility. Oh, and he also insisted on writing notes on a chalkboard and removing his ashy scribbles with an eraser that left behind large white traces, rendering any future written information totally unreadable.

Overall though, he was a well-meaning guy who was just hopelessly ill-prepared to teach this course. And he didn't take attendance, so.. you know how that goes. I was all set to skip today's class to finish up some work for the one I had afterwards, but I ran into Jaehee during a snack break (something we both often indulge in) and through her powers of coercion and deceptive physical strength, was dragged to class with her. After about 15 minutes into lecture though, we determined that we would most assuredly not be learning anything for the next 65 and considered how we could exit without making a scene. Other students got up and left periodically but we had stupidly chosen seats smack dab in the middle of a row near the back of the lecture hall. This conversation ensued:

J: Next time he turns around, we're just going to climb over these seats and RUN FOR IT!!!

Me: ...Okay.

We threw our bags behind our seats to prepare for the getaway and scanned the premises to see how it could be accomplished. We would only have to scale two rows to get to the door and though we'd probably attract puzzled glances from people sitting nearby, it was expected par for the course. After several false starts, where we would try to get up only to immediately sit back down when the professor turned our way, Jaehee, frustrated, took it upon herself to lead the charge and announced, "Let's just leave now!" She then promptly stood up and scrambled over the seats, but in the process, caught her foot on an armrest and knocked it on the metal back of a seat which just so happened to produce a very loud, reverberating sound plainly heard around the room. Heads quickly turned and people started laughing once they recognized that the strange brown-haired figure doing parkour in the back was obviously someone trying to leave undetected. That someone had failed. Miserably.

At this point, I had sunk down in my seat with palm to face, hoping that God would finally grant me the ability to magically transport myself out of awkward situations so that I wouldn't have to get up and identify myself as The Other Asian Girl once we were inevitably reported for public disturbance to the Economics department. I had no choice though, since my bag was already on the other side and I knew Jaehee would be waiting for me to come out. (By now, she was already out the door as she figured it would be better to act as if stumbling on an armrest and straddling chairs to leave a class was completely acceptable behavior and continued to exit.) Thus began the most excruciating seven seconds of my life, as I mumbled sheepish apologies to the guys sitting behind me while weaving between their legs to walk out in a somewhat civilized manner. (I decided that after what just took place, following Jaehee's example of resembling a spider monkey breaking out of federal prison would not be the best form of departure.)

When I burst through the double doors into the building's atrium outside, I found Jaehee curled up in stitches on the floor, in tears while laughing at possibly the worst and most harebrained attempt ever made to leave any sort of formal function. And so ends my short-lived career as a curious Econ-course taker. But my new life as a professional escape artist? Effective immediately.