Emma

I don't really like being a receptionist.

and, I think that my company may be the only company in new zealand that has an ivy league graduate as their receptionist...i wonder if they know this.

I've just found a little note on my livejournal that says I haven't posted in 46 weeks...and i dare not see what happens if it becomes an entire year. I think i am going to have to come up with some sort of theme for my livejournal, because it doesn't seem I have anything interesting to post if I don't.

I've been sick on and off for the past two weeks, culminating in the doctor telling me I wasn't allowed to hug anyone (or go to work) for fear of giving them whatever stomach bug I am suffering from. This means that I have been stuck in my little 45m2 apartment for four days straight now doing nothing but watching television. And although I have a very high tolerance for garbage tv, I think I may have hit my limit. I watched about 4 hours of the "engaged and underage" marathon on mtv. Now most of the programming on mtv here in new zealand is recycled shows at least 2 or 3 years old - but this is one of the only shows they play here that I didn't watch originally in high school or college. Andrew says the recurring theme he has taken away from it is "two words - white trash" or "two other words - middle america" and basically he's not wrong. But I have to say I am completely fascinated by this show, not just because of the people on it, but the crazy mtv messages being sent out to its audience (whom I am assuming are generally at least 5 years younger than me). Now the basic theme is this, mtv follows couples who are getting married and who are between the ages of 17 and 22. The couples seem to fall into two groups - either they have made vows to be virgins until marriage, or they are pregnant or have children. Now there's a lot of sex (and a lot of teen sex) on mtv, but for some reason the sex themes of this show I find severely creepy. Now there are the typical virgin couples who for whatever reasons have chosen to stay virgins until marriage who, unsurprisingly, once they are married talk mostly about their sex lives. This seems sort of expected. But then there's this couple - a 19 year old girl and 22 year old boy - who are four months pregnant when they get married. The whole episode focuses around the boy's family telling him that getting married just because she is pregnant is a bad idea. But then there's this whole after-show where all the couple talks about is how they are sexually adventurous and like to try new things so they don't get bored. Not once during the whole episode before they are married do they talk about teen sex or sex with each other or even mention the word sex (even though her pregnancy is an evident sign that they have a sex life) but once they are married the focus is completely on that...and i have to assume since they didn't "save themselves for marriage" their sex life couldn't be much different 2 weeks after the wedding as it was two weeks before. So basically this show is telling me (or any 15 year old watching it) that marriage = sex. This i find kind of disturbing - and severely flawed. I mean I suppose it just points to the bigger issue of values in America where our government funds "sex education" which does no educating and merely advocates abstinence, but then simultaneously preaches on the sanctity of marriage. If teens choose to not have sex before marriage because they believe they are sinning, and then choose to be married so they can have sex without being morally conflicted...i'm pretty sure the sanctity of marriage is in threat anyway. Marriage for these people seems to be a means to an end...either a socially acceptable family (where a pregnancy is involved) or socially acceptable sex life.

MTV has absolutely taken over my mind. I'm still ruminating on something interesting to say about my super sweet 16, but mostly I think i just want to be these rich girls who can buy their fifteen minutes of fame. In my next life...

So I return to LJ to report that I just quit a job for the very first time. The main reason was over what I would call an atmosphere of biggotry, but which the head of the summer camp from hell termed "the so called prejudicial environment" i felt. I am tired and very disoriented after I was kicked off of camp grounds 10 minutes after I quit, but I will give a quick rundown of quotes the head of the camp felt she needed to say to me before i left.

- "If you think that I haven't seen racism in Boston then honey you are wrong. I live in a neighborhood 50/50 black and white and I see black people on the basketball courts. Sometimes I see black people on the tennis courts and I wouldn't be afraid to go play with them."

-"I have several afro-american friends. One of my friends travelled around the south as the first black mrs. santa claus and I was with her and we were fighting racism."

-" my husband teaches black kids tennis, but he would never tell people about it" (I think she meant he would never "brag" about the "charity" he performs by working with black people)

-"Do you think that perhaps you are more sensitive than most people? Can I be blunt? You're being selfish by quitting."

-emma: One of the male staff during buncle beauty [where men dress up as women to entertain the children] called himself dairy queen which is offensive because that is a term that was reclaimed by the queer community long ago and it doesn't help to have straight homophobic men using it in a negative way.
linda (responding): oh but what you don't know is that David works on a farm so it must have to do with that.

So the catalyst to why i quit was an incident where during buncle beauty a male staff member was asked to "woo the judges in a different language" and he responded by saying (paraphrased) "ching chang chong wong too too chang" and everyone got a big laugh and when I finally got to speak to my boss about it 2 days later she said she couldn't understand why I would be offended because it wasn't meant to be offensive and she would feel comfortable speaking fake hebrew. And then she advised me to speak to one of the mormon bosses because it's against her religion to curse and she has learned to deal with the campers cursing (hense I should learn to live with the campers and counselors speaking fake chinese and ignorning that fact that it's racist and personally offensive to me).

So I'm home now and really sort of shell shocked, and I'm a little embarassed because I had to quit, but I'm also embarassed because they made me second guess whether I should stick up for myself and whether I was making a big deal out of something that no one seemed to think was and they made me sort of wish I wasn't other in this environment because then i would be much happier. ugh.

well I'm back at brown for my last semester of college and I figure I should start up the lj once again. I've moved into my dorm room which has (wait for it...) my very own bathroom! I bought the requisite US Weekly which is strictly for bathroom reading and i themed all of my towels and bathmat in a lovely aqua scheme. Once i move in my loyal tv set and mini fridge i'll have no need to leave the dorm ever.

Well I have now arrived safely home from New Zealand. I am sort of in that stage where I have lots of things that I could write about but I am too lazy to do it. It's scary being home, and the thing is I wasn't away that long (relative to say, lifetimes when people grow up and move away from home forever) but I think the city is scaring me a little. Does that sound weird? I've never really been afraid of the city, but there are several things that I am finding really hard to deal with. The lady at the LAX ticket counter who just walked away from the counter no less than 3 times while serving me to talk to a coworker about her weekend, or the table of young guys in the sushi restaurant who were extraordinarily loud, or the construction worker who make a kissy smooch at me when I (accidentally) made eye contact with him on the street. The city seems much much bigger than it ever has before (it seems a hundred times more scary than when I moved here at 13 and would jump on the subway all by myself and go exploring different neighborhoods). But anyway...

I got to see some of my horace mann friends the other weekend, and we celebrated our first all-being-21 night in new york. I decided that I would order a real grown up drink and my mom always drinks manhattans so I ordered one of those, and I sort of (thought i) remembered what it tasted like and that it had a cherry in it, but my goodness! Manhattans are the strongest drink in the whole world. I will never make that mistake again. But, like a grownup, i quietly drank my entire manhattan before moving on to better girly drinks like frangelico sours.

That's all for now. I am missing new zealand (of course). I also have found that I have an extraordinary amount of time on my hands without andrew around. But he gets here in 9 days so yay for that.

I'm spending a week here before I fly back to the US (just in time for the macy's thanksgiving day parade!) and this city is just wonderful, very different than new york, but big and exciting with all sorts of fun places for exploring. I think i may never return to the states.

Today is my last day in Dunedin. It also happens to be my favorite day of the year (11/11) and my flatmate Euan's 23rd birthday. And since I finished exams yesterday we have all organized a barbecue in our backyard. It's 4 pm and we've put up decorations and set up food and but the beer in the fridge so I just wanted to make my last post from here - before i celebrate my very last night. It's been a very long time since I've left a place not wanting to leave. I love this place and i love how i feel when i'm here. dunedin may be a little town at the bottom of the world but it is just wonderful, there's no place else like it.

my flatmate euan's girlfriend Kat has a little brother named Alexander (he's 8) who I met a few weeks ago when we were invited to celebrate his weekly "McDonald's Friday" in which we skipped everything we were meant to do and eat fast food instead. So this was all fun, and then yesterday Kat informed me that Alexander is just devastated that I am leaving so soon (after we met), and to make a long story short I have a play date today! so yay for that. I have to say I quite enjoy the company of this kid who is really funny and says funny New Zealand things like "pardon" which just sound so polite out of the mouth of a little kid. Plus he's got two race-car/water beds so you know he has to be cool.

I finished my personal statement for my grad school apps, but I am too fearful to yet post them on the online application websites so I think I am going to let them sit and age a bit and see if I still like them in a week or so. The thing is I had so much help writing essays for my college applications in high school (as did everyone from Horace Mann, we practically took a class in how to write the essay they want) and even as I handed them in I was embarassed by them, what they said about me and how obnoxious they sounded, so I have tried to avoid that this time, but I also don't have any of the same sort of resources of other people reading them etc. I can't really decide what's better, an essay that reflects honestly where I'm at and why I want to go to grad school or an essay that sounds impressive and that makes me a good candidate. who knows.

I also have a confession to make. I totally meant to enrol to make an absentee vote but it just sort of got lost in the whole not knowing what time of year it is and so i will not be voting in the elections this year. Now I have to say that I feel sort of not so bad about this as the most important (and only) race I have any knowledge of is for NYC mayor which appears to be headed towards a landslide victory - so I could be all "my vote doesn't matter" but I realize that we should never rely on this because if we did then no one would vote blah blah blah. any who, let's put this slip up down to post-traumatic apathy caused by a retarded president.

two weeks from today I go home. and it's actually two weeks from today when i leave and still the same day when i arrive in new york over 24 hours later.

i don't wanna study. but even more than that, i don't want to be rejected from all the grad schools i am applying to.

Which flock do you follow?

this quiz was made by alanna


in other news, i haven't started studying for my last exam. i hate exams. especially ones made by crazy old realist philosophers.