blakerson.com

It's almost summertime!

That means racing season is upon us, and I'm determined to take advantage with my wonderful little car because it's MINE ALL MINE MUAHAHAHAA.

Sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm planning on getting up early on Saturdays to go whip my car around little tracks made of cones. That's called autocrossing, and my friends have been going for years and I've felt all left out. That will change for the first couple months of summer, and I'm excited to engage a) my competitive instinct and b) with the car guys I happen to know.

Hopefully, that's just the beginning. In the last couple of years I've been able to scratch off a lot of the things on my Bucket List, but one of the more persistent entries has been to go to a full-blown racing school. The kind of place where you drop $2,000 or $3,000 and get about 3 days of instruction behind purpose-built racecars.

It might seem like overkill to a dedicated car guy - "you can get 75% of the learning for 5% of the cost with autocrossing" - but I feel like my driving skill could benefit from a sledgehammer approach. Secretly, I've always suspected I was a born driver. I wanted one of those kiddie electric car Power Wheels thingies so bad when I was little, and never got one. Then it became a go-kart. Then it became an actual car.

And then I turned 9.

If I had parents who cared less for my limbs at an early age, perhaps I'd have been put in one of those little racing karts and started a career in Formula 1 at the age of like 19.

Now, F1 drivers are younger than me. That's a hard pill for me to swallow.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not imagining that I'll go to racing school and "get discovered" and wind up being a badass and bagging super-hot Japanese halfie F1 girlfriend Jessica Michibata.

But I'll at least feel like I earned something special, and that's nearly a requirement for something to make my Bucket List.

San Diego!

I committed to UCSD a couple weeks ago after visiting the campus and finding that it alone, out of my selection of four potential grad schools, had the "laid-back state school" vibe I find so familiar.

Thankfully, in the last two years I came to my senses and decided against law school, and in its stead I'll be getting a Masters in international relations.

Well, technically, International Relations and Pacific Studies. It's a clever mix of MBA-ish business work, working-level economics, high-level language training, and a smattering of other courses like Globalization and policy stuff. All of it's given a strong slant toward Pacific Rim countries, which includes Japan, China, Korea, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Long story short, it's much more my cup of tea than law school would ever be. My experience in Japan kind of slingshotted me into the gig, and most of the Japan specialists in the program are also ex-JETs like me.

It's two years of coursework with an all-but-required summer internship between the two years. There's also a chance to study abroad, which I don't know if I'll take yet, but if I do it'd be a fantastic chance to spend a semester at the University of Tokyo, which is a school for badasses.

In any case, students pick a regional specialty and a career specialty. I'll certainly be in the Japan region, but for the career stuff I'm still torn, but leaning towards International Economics. It's a pretty popular choice, and I can survive the mathematical work that seems to have plenty of people scared. Maybe I should be scared of everything else, given the lethargic pace at which I read.

Of course, there's the fantasticness of San Diego, which seems to enchant people around me with a mere mention. UCSD does have some fabulous scenery, and the IR buildings actually sit right above the ocean. I've had more people than I can count promise to come visit me. Oddly, when I was there I wasn't blown away by any of the scenery or ocean proximity, but in all fairness I was exhausted from my travel and still getting over the ugly shock of a city that was Los Angeles.

I take off sometime in July. In the meantime I'm doing all the playing and traveling I can, so hopefully I'll be visiting you soon!

Back in December I wrote about joining The Japanese Group, a bunch of Japanese speakers that meet on weekends at a snazzy bar, throw back drinks and chat.

That group is getting overrun by Koreans, and it's fun. It's influenced me to check out Korean culture more than I have in the past, despite having dated a couple Korean girls before.

Here's my mini-review of Korea:

Food: Awesome. Tasty, spicy, meaty, lots of strong flavors (even in the veggies), and somehow the women aren't fat despite a diet that has suspiciously American levels of red meat and soft drink refills. I bought a box of Korean ramen packets from the Asian supermarket and I can't stop eating them. Too delicious.

Movies: Still on the fence. I watched a couple big-name movies with this cute actress Jeon Ji-Hyun and just melted from the cute stories and that girl's own cuteness. They've started to get pretty predictable, though, which is disappointing because they were really appealing at first for not being lame and predictable American movies. If you have recommendations for movies that aren't ridiculously depressing, lay 'em on me.

Girls: Cuter than Japan's. Sorry, loves.

StarCraft on TV: Still awesome. I could idly watch that all day.

It's been a while since I properly told some stories about my life, hasn't it? I watched a Korean movie the other night and the main character kept a diary. Exact dates with exact memories were kept, and I felt guilty for not doing much of the same for the last few years. Seems like a lot of my memories from my 20s might just start slipping away, and that's no good. So here's what I've been up to today:

I caught up with a childhood friend.
Eric (and his little brother Jon) lived across the street from me when I was 4 until I was about 13. These guys were my biggest playmates. Everything I ever did outdoors, I did with them. Bicycling, playing in yards, that kind of thing. And because we were neighbors, they were playmate option #1. Almost every day turned into a combination of biking and Super Nintendo gaming.

Once they moved away, we lost touch, but I never forgot them. So it pretty much made my week when Eric found me on Facebook several weeks ago and the catch-up process began. His grandparents, who I also knew very well, are still here in Dallas, so he came down to see them and let me know that he was around.

I just got home from the catch-up dinner and coffee, when I learned all about his own business, his extended family's stuff (a bizarrely high proportion of his family is in international business; I could learn from these guys) and what his immediate family's been up to.

It made me think: my newer friends don't know my family. Are my older friends (like Eric) closer for knowing my family and for me knowing theirs? Even my closest college buds don't know my mom... but then again that's probably my mom's fault given that I know my buds' parents well enough.

I have a sportscar.
I don't say that to brag. I mean that out of all the different kinds of cars out there (sedans, SUVs, roadsters, sportscars, GTs), I picked a sportscar for myself and I'm reaping the consequences of that, for better and for worse.

Today was a perfect example. I had to drive from Austin to Dallas and then around town here with Eric. You get exposed to what you supposedly "sacrifice" for a sportscar very quickly on a long trip: comfort. My car is loud (it runs at over 4,000 RPM when cruising at 80mph) and getting stuck in stop-and-go traffic with a six-speed is just plain aggravating. And the suspension isn't exactly made of pillows, either.

The day before, I had to leave one buddy behind on a dinner trip because the car seats four, not five. And I dread the day I get a flat tire, because I have no spare and my inflating tire repair goo expired in 2007.

I should probably do something about that.

But the annoyances were worth it when I was on my way home after dropping Eric off and I decided to hightail it through town with the sunroof open and the new Prodigy album blaring. It's just a joy to drop a couple gears, hit the gas, and effortlessly throw it through a curve at twice the recommended speed. The five minutes of awesome were totally worth the five hours of monotony, and I'll keep the car for as long as that holds true.

I'm going to Japan once more! I'm taking my dear friend Adam along for the ride, and he's been studying Japanese really hard, so let's show him a good time, eh?

Details:
April 9-12: Tokyo
April 12-13: Shimane (one night only! Staying in Kawamoto)
April 13-15: Tokyo, with possible stops along the San-Yo Shinkansen on the 13th (for those of you in Kyoto, for example..)

I'm going to bring my American cell, so my mail address is
blakeellison@gmail.com

and my phone number will be American. We'll have a rental keitai on hand in case we need an actual phone number.

Your good friend and mine Jason Smith will also be joining us for parts of the trip. We're hoping to have a big UT get together on April the 10th, so be ready to party!

This note is going on Facebook as well, so the Japanese version follows. Readers of my blog, you can skip this. :)

日本語

すぐ日本にまいりま〜す！　親友の友達のアダムさんと二人で行くし、彼はせっかく日本語を勉強してるからちょっと練習させたらお世話になる。：）

僕たちは４月の９日に着いて、１２日まで東京を回っていく。１０日はみんなのオースティンの人とパーティーしたいと思います！　因みに、みんなさんのいい友達のジェイソンさんも来るからぜひ来てください！

１２日の上、１２・１３日は島根県にちょっと訪問。残念ながら、川本町しか行けない。１３日に東京に帰って来て、１５日まで東京で遊ぶつもり。

僕は自分のアイフォンを持って来るから、メアッドは昔のじゃなくて、新しいのはblakeellison@gmail.com。アメリカの番号から電話があったら、私です！　別の携帯をレンタルするから日本の電話番号もあるんでしょう。

それで、また会いましょう！