Well it’s been a while but here I am. People kept asking me when I was going to update again but I’ve been so busy with a number of things. I had to go out of state for a bit, I went to a couple of air-shows and took some pictures and videos, and on top of that I hosted an online international event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Gundam (which had participants from at least eighteen countries); among other things.
Not a whole lot has happened with my work though. I hate to say it but I got so busy throwing the anniversary event because I was doing almost all of the work myself that I didn’t have time to keep up with my school. While I know it was probably a stupid thing to do it was the 30th anniversary and that only happens once. I refused to let it go by without doing something since I knew no one else would. Had it been anything other than Gundam I wouldn’t have cared but its creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, is actually the reason I want to be a writer.
At any rate that’s all done now so all of my attention is back on work and will be from now on. I went to the college the other day to re-register for my classes because the semester ended and it was an odd experience. The paperwork was the same as always and that was followed by the teacher giving the details of the system which I already knew from before. In fact I should only need half of the credits that I did before to get a diploma now but I have to check the specifics to make sure.
The oddness didn’t start until near the end of the system explanation. The other person who was there registering for the same thing I was looked at the sections in their course and saw Etymology. She asked the teacher what this word was and what it meant, the teacher replied calling it ‘itemology’ saying it was the meaning of words. Of course I couldn’t just sit there and not say anything so I said that Etymology was the history of words. They didn’t exactly have faith in that but they took my word for it (oh look, a pun!).
After this was done everyone started talking about random things since the day was technically over and I don’t really know how but I ended up the conversation as well. The teacher asked me what it was exactly that I had been creating and managing. So I told her about the event I created, the anniversary, and that Yoshiyuki Tomino was the reason I wanted to be a writer. She asked me if it was something she could get her son interested in and I said I wasn’t sure, it all depends. In order to generalize it I just said it’s more or less about ‘giant robots’ which isn’t exactly true but I didn’t feel like getting into technical explanations about it.
I suppose since Gundam is a classic show (it was created in 1979) we ended up talking about other classic shows; which apparently only the teacher and I even knew about. I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, M*A*S*H, those kinds of shows. I said “You know how crazy it gets in M*A*S*H? That’s not even half as crazy as it actually is.” She asked “You mean back then?” to which I replied amusedly “No even now it’s like that.” Then I told her this was part of the reason I wanted to be a pilot because being in the military would be good experience for writing. Then she asked me “What do you want to fly?” I thought about it for a mere second and said in slight jest “Well, if I had my choice, an F6F” then I continued “but then it’d have to be the 40’s, so I’m a little late for that.” She said she didn’t even know that was so I went on to say that I’d want to be an F-35 pilot because it’s going to become our standardized fighter. She asked me “Which ones that?” so I replied “F-35, Lightning II” and she asked if I’d be afraid but all I could say was no.
After the other teacher came back in we went back to old shows as she asked him if he had ever seen or heard of any of the shows we had been talking about. The only one he recognized was M*A*S*H saying it was because his father watched it. There was a teenage kid there who didn’t have any clue what we were talking about so he brought up the movie Titanic and had severe disbelief over the fact that I’ve never seen it. One of the things he said was something like ‘it was their fate’ referring to the sinking of the ship; he soon said it was because the crew of the ship said that not even god could sink it.
A little bit more into the conversation (of which I wasn’t saying anything at this point) he brought up ‘the space shuttle’. He didn’t give any ship names and he vaguely referenced the event in which the OV-102 Columbia burnt up on it’s re-entry into the atmosphere. I really don’t know what brought any of this on but he said that his grandfather had told him the reason they couldn’t come back to Earth was because ‘they didn’t see heaven up there.’ It was like one of those train wrecks that you can see coming a mile away but you think ‘there’s no way this is going to happen…’ and then it does. I really wanted to put my hands over my face and shake my head but I kept being polite. I could tell that even the teacher thought this was a little silly and started to more quickly get her things together to go to her meeting.
Once she had gone the conversation was pretty much over and so I went to check on how many more credits I needed. The other teacher who was there at the time looked around a little asking me what my name was and said that my file wasn’t there. Further saying my teacher who had just left currently had the file. I said that I would just E-Mail her and ask her about it later, thanked him, and went to go sit outside until my father was back from doing whatever he was doing.
As I was sitting outside I thought about how uncomfortable the stone bench was and how I was glad to at least be out of the building away from strange conversations. Not ten minutes go by and the same kid walks out and sits on the bench on the opposite side of the entrance. He asked if I was doing the same program as him and I said I was; then he asked me if I really wanted to be a writer and of course I said yes. He then said that he had written a story once based off of a dream he had but that he made up more to it. I told him that’s how writing works; you find something that you like or think would be good and expand upon it. I also told him that the hardest part about writing is just getting it on paper. He asked me what I wanted to write about and I replied saying I most likely wanted to do sci-fi to which he said “You mean real stories?” I said “No, sci-fi, like Star Trek.” and he replied “Oh so like kind of real but not.” so I said “Yeah.”
Apparently he had been on his break and it was then over so he went back inside to work more. I again felt relieved that I was again alone but it was again short lived. An older man soon came out of the building and started talking to me saying he hated the English classes and that he had written a paper uncaring of errors and told the program to auto correct everything so he could come outside for a smoke break. I wasn’t sure what to say so in order to avoid being rude I said I always liked writing but hated science. He told me he loved science, especially when they dissected frogs. I told him I passed on that, it wasn’t for me. We talked a little more and I said I just wanted to do whatever I had to so I could get my credits and all of my requirements to be a pilot. He asked what I needed and I said I needed a college level to degree to which he replied “Oh that’s right because you need to be an officer to be a pilot” I further explained that the minimum requirement to even enlist in the Marines was now fifteen college credits at which he gave me a look of shock and said “To enlist?” I replied nodding “Yes to enlist.”
The reason he was so surprised by the minimum requirements was that he too was once in the military; I assume Marines. He then began to speak of his career and that he should’ve tried to become an officer. One thing he said was that one time when he was being transferred that he had the choice of either Hawaii or Germany. Then he said “I liked Hawaii but if I had went there then I’d be walking around like this all day.” As he said that he raised his arm and made the salute gesture. Basically he was saying there were lots of officers there and that’d he’d be saluting all day. So he chose Germany, only to later find out that at the medical unit where he would be going they’d mostly be officers too. However he said he was lucky because the day he was supposed to get on the train to go to Germany they told him that he was going to Italy instead and he said he felt relieved.
He continued with other stories. One of them was about how he had mistaken the general who was his base commander to be an Italian officer and thus didn’t salute him which he subsequently got chewed out for. Another was about how terrible their filing and paperwork system was and that he had spent a year completely re-organizing all of their medical records. He even said that one of the files he found sitting on a shelf was of a guy who was a Colonel that had been dead for two years and soon found out that his widow had been filling his prescriptions this entire time. She caused a huge fuss over being denied the medication that was meant for her very dead husband and insisted that she be given his original medical records so she could continue to get more somewhere else but he refused and went through every paper stamping ‘deceased’.
My father had come back during this story and they both started talking about how hard it was to get a job once you retire from the military. He said he had tried to get a job in a few hospitals since he had all of the qualifications but was denied because he hadn’t then yet used a computer because they did all of their paperwork and records by hand. After a little more of them talking we finally left and the day was over.
----
On a slightly related note I took a number of pictures and some videos from the “Wings over Wayne” air-show at Seymour Johnson AFB and some from the MCAS Cherry Point air-show. I haven’t had time to go through both of them yet but I’ve sorted and uploaded everything that I took from the first show at Seymour Johnson AFB. I’ll add links to the Cherry Point air-show once I get them up.
Videos of the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here (click the HD button to watch them in the best quality!): http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=71FD2EBB871C3F32
Pictures from the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v259/casval/Camera/Airshows/Seymour%20Johnson%20AFB%202009/
You can also download the complete collection of pictures and videos from Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 here.
Pictures Pack: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CTF33U79
Video Pack 1: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1CBHQW1B
Video Pack 2: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NQ3YFECJ
Video Pack 3: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5ITRQNYC
Video Pack 4: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GDJJ4R27
Not a whole lot has happened with my work though. I hate to say it but I got so busy throwing the anniversary event because I was doing almost all of the work myself that I didn’t have time to keep up with my school. While I know it was probably a stupid thing to do it was the 30th anniversary and that only happens once. I refused to let it go by without doing something since I knew no one else would. Had it been anything other than Gundam I wouldn’t have cared but its creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, is actually the reason I want to be a writer.
At any rate that’s all done now so all of my attention is back on work and will be from now on. I went to the college the other day to re-register for my classes because the semester ended and it was an odd experience. The paperwork was the same as always and that was followed by the teacher giving the details of the system which I already knew from before. In fact I should only need half of the credits that I did before to get a diploma now but I have to check the specifics to make sure.
The oddness didn’t start until near the end of the system explanation. The other person who was there registering for the same thing I was looked at the sections in their course and saw Etymology. She asked the teacher what this word was and what it meant, the teacher replied calling it ‘itemology’ saying it was the meaning of words. Of course I couldn’t just sit there and not say anything so I said that Etymology was the history of words. They didn’t exactly have faith in that but they took my word for it (oh look, a pun!).
After this was done everyone started talking about random things since the day was technically over and I don’t really know how but I ended up the conversation as well. The teacher asked me what it was exactly that I had been creating and managing. So I told her about the event I created, the anniversary, and that Yoshiyuki Tomino was the reason I wanted to be a writer. She asked me if it was something she could get her son interested in and I said I wasn’t sure, it all depends. In order to generalize it I just said it’s more or less about ‘giant robots’ which isn’t exactly true but I didn’t feel like getting into technical explanations about it.
I suppose since Gundam is a classic show (it was created in 1979) we ended up talking about other classic shows; which apparently only the teacher and I even knew about. I Dream of Jeannie, The Munsters, M*A*S*H, those kinds of shows. I said “You know how crazy it gets in M*A*S*H? That’s not even half as crazy as it actually is.” She asked “You mean back then?” to which I replied amusedly “No even now it’s like that.” Then I told her this was part of the reason I wanted to be a pilot because being in the military would be good experience for writing. Then she asked me “What do you want to fly?” I thought about it for a mere second and said in slight jest “Well, if I had my choice, an F6F” then I continued “but then it’d have to be the 40’s, so I’m a little late for that.” She said she didn’t even know that was so I went on to say that I’d want to be an F-35 pilot because it’s going to become our standardized fighter. She asked me “Which ones that?” so I replied “F-35, Lightning II” and she asked if I’d be afraid but all I could say was no.
After the other teacher came back in we went back to old shows as she asked him if he had ever seen or heard of any of the shows we had been talking about. The only one he recognized was M*A*S*H saying it was because his father watched it. There was a teenage kid there who didn’t have any clue what we were talking about so he brought up the movie Titanic and had severe disbelief over the fact that I’ve never seen it. One of the things he said was something like ‘it was their fate’ referring to the sinking of the ship; he soon said it was because the crew of the ship said that not even god could sink it.
A little bit more into the conversation (of which I wasn’t saying anything at this point) he brought up ‘the space shuttle’. He didn’t give any ship names and he vaguely referenced the event in which the OV-102 Columbia burnt up on it’s re-entry into the atmosphere. I really don’t know what brought any of this on but he said that his grandfather had told him the reason they couldn’t come back to Earth was because ‘they didn’t see heaven up there.’ It was like one of those train wrecks that you can see coming a mile away but you think ‘there’s no way this is going to happen…’ and then it does. I really wanted to put my hands over my face and shake my head but I kept being polite. I could tell that even the teacher thought this was a little silly and started to more quickly get her things together to go to her meeting.
Once she had gone the conversation was pretty much over and so I went to check on how many more credits I needed. The other teacher who was there at the time looked around a little asking me what my name was and said that my file wasn’t there. Further saying my teacher who had just left currently had the file. I said that I would just E-Mail her and ask her about it later, thanked him, and went to go sit outside until my father was back from doing whatever he was doing.
As I was sitting outside I thought about how uncomfortable the stone bench was and how I was glad to at least be out of the building away from strange conversations. Not ten minutes go by and the same kid walks out and sits on the bench on the opposite side of the entrance. He asked if I was doing the same program as him and I said I was; then he asked me if I really wanted to be a writer and of course I said yes. He then said that he had written a story once based off of a dream he had but that he made up more to it. I told him that’s how writing works; you find something that you like or think would be good and expand upon it. I also told him that the hardest part about writing is just getting it on paper. He asked me what I wanted to write about and I replied saying I most likely wanted to do sci-fi to which he said “You mean real stories?” I said “No, sci-fi, like Star Trek.” and he replied “Oh so like kind of real but not.” so I said “Yeah.”
Apparently he had been on his break and it was then over so he went back inside to work more. I again felt relieved that I was again alone but it was again short lived. An older man soon came out of the building and started talking to me saying he hated the English classes and that he had written a paper uncaring of errors and told the program to auto correct everything so he could come outside for a smoke break. I wasn’t sure what to say so in order to avoid being rude I said I always liked writing but hated science. He told me he loved science, especially when they dissected frogs. I told him I passed on that, it wasn’t for me. We talked a little more and I said I just wanted to do whatever I had to so I could get my credits and all of my requirements to be a pilot. He asked what I needed and I said I needed a college level to degree to which he replied “Oh that’s right because you need to be an officer to be a pilot” I further explained that the minimum requirement to even enlist in the Marines was now fifteen college credits at which he gave me a look of shock and said “To enlist?” I replied nodding “Yes to enlist.”
The reason he was so surprised by the minimum requirements was that he too was once in the military; I assume Marines. He then began to speak of his career and that he should’ve tried to become an officer. One thing he said was that one time when he was being transferred that he had the choice of either Hawaii or Germany. Then he said “I liked Hawaii but if I had went there then I’d be walking around like this all day.” As he said that he raised his arm and made the salute gesture. Basically he was saying there were lots of officers there and that’d he’d be saluting all day. So he chose Germany, only to later find out that at the medical unit where he would be going they’d mostly be officers too. However he said he was lucky because the day he was supposed to get on the train to go to Germany they told him that he was going to Italy instead and he said he felt relieved.
He continued with other stories. One of them was about how he had mistaken the general who was his base commander to be an Italian officer and thus didn’t salute him which he subsequently got chewed out for. Another was about how terrible their filing and paperwork system was and that he had spent a year completely re-organizing all of their medical records. He even said that one of the files he found sitting on a shelf was of a guy who was a Colonel that had been dead for two years and soon found out that his widow had been filling his prescriptions this entire time. She caused a huge fuss over being denied the medication that was meant for her very dead husband and insisted that she be given his original medical records so she could continue to get more somewhere else but he refused and went through every paper stamping ‘deceased’.
My father had come back during this story and they both started talking about how hard it was to get a job once you retire from the military. He said he had tried to get a job in a few hospitals since he had all of the qualifications but was denied because he hadn’t then yet used a computer because they did all of their paperwork and records by hand. After a little more of them talking we finally left and the day was over.
----
On a slightly related note I took a number of pictures and some videos from the “Wings over Wayne” air-show at Seymour Johnson AFB and some from the MCAS Cherry Point air-show. I haven’t had time to go through both of them yet but I’ve sorted and uploaded everything that I took from the first show at Seymour Johnson AFB. I’ll add links to the Cherry Point air-show once I get them up.
Videos of the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here (click the HD button to watch them in the best quality!): http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=71FD2EBB871C3F32
Pictures from the Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 air-show can be seen here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v259/casval/Camera/Airshows/Seymour%20Johnson%20AFB%202009/
You can also download the complete collection of pictures and videos from Seymour Johnson AFB 2009 here.
Pictures Pack: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CTF33U79
Video Pack 1: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1CBHQW1B
Video Pack 2: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NQ3YFECJ
Video Pack 3: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5ITRQNYC
Video Pack 4: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GDJJ4R27
