#first dream was fun i was living in some kind of huge af dorms in a big house (my room was a biiig library room for some reason. all the | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thisnerdsadventures · 3 years

Text

a summer to remember

hello friends, i definitely just abandoned this whole blog, now didn't i

well i am happy to report that i am still alive, and am thriving!

Here's a rundown of everything that has been going on:

[inserting a readmore because this is long af]

May

So in May, I was definitely just all over the place because I was 1) trying to finish a paper published in a conference!! it literally drove me insane. anyways, then i had to go and finish a 78 page thesis, which involved a really convoluted timeline because i had to finish it ~ a week before the actual deadline so my PI could read it over, but then i had to finish it a few days before THAT so my PhD supervisors could read it over, which meant that i had like one (1) week to write like. all of it.

Luckily I had most of the first half already written, during whatever shitshow April was (April was a lot of coding for the paper, and then not having time to write my thesis). But THEN i had to organize all the data from my own personal experiments, make figures, and draft the entire results section. AND i had like two final reports to do for my class, so my last weeks of academia looked like....

Of course, the day before my thesis was due, I pulled an all nighter, because, of course. What other way would I ever end my academic career. Submitted it though, and I graduated! [LINK TO MY THESIS]

Also! I got vaccinated and felt like death for a whole day, but then my friend came over and we ate fried chicken and watched this show called Miraculous, which is a kids show from France, but for some reason is actually hilarious and really entertaining. Then I felt better, so I proceeded to work on my thesis.

Also, I guess I should talk a little bit about the class I took this semester, which was an industrial organization economics class. We looked at things like how different markets are organized, why they are that way, what market concentration means, how mergers affect competition, and what kind of effect that may impose on consumers. For the final case study (which, I will say, I wrote like 2000 words in a single day, so . applause for me), I looked at the Nvidia-ARM merger and how that may or may not affect competition in the GPU market, the CPU market, and the mobile chip market. I think my analysis was a little bit more surface level, which was fine for me, since I'm by no means an economics expert or even remotely should have any expectations at all, but I read a lot and learned a lot and that's the goal!

So yes, my brief excursion into the field of economics was overall positive, I feel like I learned a lot and now I can read financial articles about the tech industry and not be completely lost, which, again, was the goal.

But yes, May was a lot of work, and once it wrapped up, I got to spend a lot of time with friends post-vaccination! After the 1 or 2 week mark after my second dose, I started going back to the gym, especially to play basketball with folks, which I had missed a lot. I spent a lot of time at my old dorm just hanging out, and got to have a cute salmon dinner over at my other friend's place. And we made cheesecake too.

June (MA->NY->MA->CA)

I finally went to visit my best friend in New York. I hadn't seen her in > 400 days, so it was really a very anticipated event, except we saw each other across the crosswalk, but then the light took like five minutes to turn green, so it was really anticlimactic. Anyways, we ended up bumming around New York and Long Island for a week, and it was nice to spend some time with her after such a long gap.

We spent a day at a vineyard and I fell asleep so

After getting back to Boston, my mom came back from Taiwan to help me move out of my apartment. It was a lot of finding people to sell things to, sweating because it was very hot that week, and praying everything would work out (it did). I also got to have a few final meals with various friends and my mom and I got to take one last lark down the Infinite, which I was really grateful for because it was the first time visitors got to go inside campus in over a year.

Also got into my school's MBA program! Yes i applied to a deferred program (which is like you get into a program, but you don't have to go for 2-5 years, as a way of getting in right after undergrad/grad school, but then accumulating some work experience first). It was hilarious, I was literally shopping in my campus store for a new sweatshirt and I got a phone call from the admissions office saying I got in. My mom had been pushing me to apply to grad programs, and I didn't tell her about it because I didn't know if I would actually follow through. But I got to surprise her with the news, and she was so happy she did the whole "calling all the relatives" thing again.

After flying home, I told myself I'd read more and exercise more, which I have been doing. I got a membership at Planet Fitness, which has been really good for me (going 3x a week), and I've made my way through at least 5 books this summer so far. My holds list at my local library is literally insane. (For recs, I recently read Normal People, which I absolutely devoured, and In the Dream House, which hit really hard for me.)

This summer was also really about reconnecting with high school friends. All three of us were unemployed, with plans to come in the fall, so we were all free to hang out all the time. We started out at the local library planning out a road trip, and we worked out a few times together, and a few coffee dates too. We took a fun day trip down to LA one day, and we visited Malibu, went to the Getty, hit up some local food places in the city. Driving down the PCH with Taylor Swift blaring and the windows down on a hot June day, just hits so different. There is nothing like it.

My friend's birthday was in June, so we put together a little video for her and bought some jewelry, and had a Zoom call to celebrate. Then I got BBQ with some friends and sat in the parking lot eating ice cream until 11 at night just trading stories from our pasts. It felt like the perfect summer life, just staying out until whenever, grabbing food wherever we wanted, with friends I had had for literally a whole decade.

It was already a really good summer, but then July. July was crazy.

July (CA -> MI -> CA -> NV -> CA -> WA -> OR -> CA)

So one Sunday morning, I woke up to a text

Actually, I'm going to do a separate post on the whole Michigan trip because that sh** was on another level of spontaneous, impulsive, crazy life stuff. But anyways, so July started off with a trip to Michigan to visit my friends, and then I came back for the 4th, had 36 hours of rest before my high school friends and I went on a road trip.

This road trip was a little ambitious. We hit spots all up California, from hiking in Sequoia Nat'l Park to Kings Canyon, driving up to Sacramento and visiting art museums, and then going up to Tahoe but staying in Nevada, going kayaking and hiking and sitting on the beach for hours. It was reallllllly hot, but luckily I don't think it ever broke 90 degrees. The views were beautiful, especially at Kings Canyon. The drive in, you're surrounded by huge rock walls, with a thin river rushing by next to you. The hike itself literally feels like you're in nature, like the trail is somewhat defined but not paved, there are no sounds of traffic, the path isn't heavily trafficked so we were the only ones there for the most part. We even saw a deer and washed our faces in the river. Throughout the whole thing, we climbed into so many waterfalls, trying not to slip on rocks.

I hadn't been to Sacramento in over a decade, but it was a cute day trip. There isn't a ton to do there, but it was a nice reprieve from the constant driving and nature. We visited the Leland Stanford Mansion, the Crocker Art Museum, and Old Town Sacramento. A good chance to get a nice coffee, a sit-down meal, and some air conditioning. At Tahoe, we went kayaking on Pope Beach, with the clearest water I have ever seen, followed up by a hike up to a beautiful view of the Lake.

On our way back, we stopped at a lot of interesting places, like small towns like Lee Vining, where we found an Upside Down House; Manzanar, the site of an old Japanese internment camp during the WWII era (which also hit hard); and Randsburg, a literal living ghost town. Overall, getting to travel with my friends finally was so fun, they were so much fun to be around for five days, and getting to explore so much of California was so fun - even though I'd been here for so long, I never knew these places existed.

So I came back and had around 48 hours to recover before my mom and I took a trip up to the Pacific Northwest!

I've always wanted to visit Seattle, and figured I'd hit Portland on the way too. We originally wanted to go to Hawaii but it got so expensive by the middle of the summer, so we decided to stay a little closer to home (probs the better decision bc I was already so tired by this point).

Seattle! Got to visit Pike Place Market many times, grab some coffee at the original Starbucks, see Mt. Rainier, and grab food with three friends! Also went to Bainbridge Island for a day which was SO cute - got to do an olive oil/balsamic vinegar tasting, which sounds so extra, but is actually really unexpectedly fun. At Starbs, I did a cold brew flight, which resulted in a rough night of tossing and turning for me, but I think it was worth it. Other things included the Pinball Museum, Space Needle, and Chihuly Glass Museum!

So I lowkey really wanted to visit Portland because I wanted to achieve a long-lasting dream of seeing an NWSL game in person. So I went to the Thorns Pride game!!

The Thorns fanbase is actually insane, I cannot express to you, like there's this whole fan section that actually did synchronized cheers and routines and was actually ROARING when they scored the entire game. I swear the audience was actually watching them at points instead of the match. Overall, the stadium was going crazy, like I thought I was at a tied Celtics-Bucks game with how loud it was in there. Also I swear, Ali Krieger made eye contact with me and waved.

In addition to that, Portland also has a huge rose garden, a nice Japanese tea garden, a lot of good donut stores and a huge bookstore, so all very up my alley. We also took a day trip to see Mt. Hood and more waterfalls!!

That's a summary of the SEA - PDX trip. Once I got home, my high school friends and I did not waste any time on reuniting to hang out - we went and played ball, grabbed lunch, and then coffee, and then did the same exact thing like two days later and watched a bunch of TikToks, and then spent a whole day at the beach to send my good friend off to medical school in Arizona. They somehow convinced me to go in the water and I got body checked by a wave.

Saw this sculpture on the beach and teared up a little

So proud of my friends for making it to med school, I am so excited to see them at their white coat ceremonies and beyond, I swear I will cry at every step of the way I'm so happy for them. Now that July is pretty much over, most of my fun summer plans are too, and I finally get a chance to catch my breath from that busy busy month. Spending a lot of time watching the Olympics and trying to muster up the motivation to start a fulltime job in < 1 month!!

Overall, I feel like I've been having a really solid summer given the year that was the covid year. I had a Lot of fun, literally probably two summers worth of fun consolidated into one. I think in the beginning of the year, I really wanted this summer to be good, and I didn't have a lot of set plans for the summer, even by the end of May. But somehow, things came together, like Really together, and I had the best summer of my life in this summer 2021. On top of that, I'm reading more than I have since probably middle school, I feel the most in shape that I ever have, I can DRIVE NOW. Only thing that would've made it better was if I got to go back to Taiwan to visit the fam, but unfortunately I can't go back because of strict travel restrictions there and they had a COVID outbreak too :/ I still got around 3.5 weeks of summer to go, so we'll see how the rest goes :)

1 note · View note

blacknovelist · 7 years

Note

O_O Your answer to my last question/headcanon thing just made me realize something I had not previously considered: Inko and Enji's relationship. PLEASE TELL ME MORE!! Cause they WOULD sorta be like siblings in a way since they've known each other their entire lives (and because Inko 'beats him up' on a semi-regular basis from the ages of 4-15). Please oh please tell me more about totally-the-big-sister-even-though-'we're-the-SAME-AGE-INKO-GOD!!'-Inko. *chinhands* Please tell me more. (:

HELL YEAH IM HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THESE KIDS, TAKE UR SEAT ANON, I hope u and the world are ready for another session of “Novel half thinks half bullshits her way through this AU, feat. The incredible conversations me and @guardianlioness have had about Ageswap since it’s creation last year”

So, like, I talk a lot about the fact that Enji develops really well in the au, and how he used to be a jerk but he’s mellowed on combined effort from his class and his dad, all that stuff, and I joke a lot that he’s the Bakugou of the AU bc he’s grumpy af, but it’s time to actually focus on that pre-development stuff when he actually is a huge goddamn ass within Ageswap bc it’s relevant. And when I say he’s an ass, I do mean it. Bear with me for a little, Anon.

Within the AU, Shouto is an okay dad. He teaches his son to walk, to read, to write, shows him that quirk marriage is wrong and inspired him to be a hero. But he’s also terribly emotionally withdrawn, just as a person - he struggles showing his feelings and expressing them for others (I don’t know if we’re keeping it, but one of our old conversations suggests he might have had a wife that died, which also factors in), and that all hit Enji a lot. I’m not saying he doesn’t show his son that he loves him, but it’s not enough. The little things don’t matter when you don’t know what they are. Enji knows his father loves him, but his relationship with his dad is strained to it’s near limit when he goes into UA. Enji’s main goal for being a hero is bc its, well, his dream - to save people, to be incredible like his old man, yeah. But at the time he entered, he has a second goal - to surpass Deku, be the number one, and get a little bit of recognition from his old man.

But things start young, you know? So here’s the deal on their relationship;

There was a hole in Ageswap that I’m patching up at this exact moment so bear with me again; a lot of Inko and Enji’s childhoods don’t match up, as in they didn’t much know each other until a bit later in their lives. The reason is due to the fact that when Izuku took Inko in, he wasn’t in the same area as Todoroki when Enji was born, and at that time it’s not really like they could gallivant way off to see each other bc woah, we both have babies to take care of now on top of our hero duties! Incredible!

Inko calls the Canon 1-A heroes her aunts and uncles, because they’d video chat or visit Deku a lot while he was raising Inko. Enji also loosely regards canon 1-A as his surrogate family in the same way, because they visited Todoroki too. He and Inko knew each other through copious video chats and word of mouth, but Deku doesn’t move to a closer area to them until Inko is about 4, and they don’t meet until Deku has started teaching when Inko is about 6. (Enji, at these times, is 3 and 5 respectively)

Inko and Enji meet just after Enji’s birthday, a bit over halfway through summer. Inko is already used to calling Tensei her cousin (tho I suppose technically he’d be one of her uncles, but whatever) and so, she has no qualms about calling Enji her cousin. Enji…. Has a lot more reservations. He rejects the cousin title pretty harshly for a five-year-old, and it’s a good thing Inko has always been an observant young thing bc she takes it in stride and resolves to try again when he’ll be more comfortable with it. She still calls Shouto her uncle, of course.

But regardless, their relationship is pretty okay. He doesn’t spar with Inko until she’s seven, which is when she kicks his ass for the first time, and that’s more or less when Enji’s respect for her rises to the same level of respect he has for Deku, approximately. In fairness, Enji does, on some level, register Inko as his cousin - he’s just got trouble admitting that family tie to himself out loud. He respects her, she sees him as family, and Inko has to deal with the clueless duo of Izuku and Toshinori anyway, it’s not like waiting for Enji is really that much of a challenge. His own pace and all that. It helps that Inko is super straight with everyone, bc misunderstandings suck.

They poke fun at each other a lot tho, and Enji is noticably comfortable around Inko. It’s kind of curious. Inko’ll tease him about training, Enji will snark back that he could flip her over his head now that he’s here in highschool with her, Inko will laugh and stage whisper to the class that he definitely can’t, it’s great. They don’t call each other family (yet), but there’s an ease between them that you don’t get to see all that often that says they’re more than friends or aquaintances, you know? Inko is one of the few people Enji can really tolerate at the start of the “series”, so to speak, mostly because they’re used to each other. They’re also not afraid to roughhouse a bit, like gentle shoves and pushes, elbows to the gut and all that. Enji does spar with Inko semi-regularly, but usually it’s a part of a lesson rather than some free spar where they go until someone can’t anymore, and it decreases as they grow older. The reason mostly being that their schedules are just, too busy now.

And, like, he’ll never admit it, but Enji is completely and utterly ready to throw down for Inko if she needs it. Which she never will bc she can handle herself, but he’s still ready. Inko is also always ready to throw down if people mess with Enji, but they usually don’t for many, many reasons. Mostly because he looks scary af without trying. But still - they look damn out for each other. They’re family, lack of word between them be damned.

When the dorms roll around, Inko becomes an honorary Class 1-A member and also the surrogate big sis to everyone. Enji, like Bakugou in canon, is mellowing out now. Things are easier for him. Inko is able to tease him and hang out with him more, Enji is able to casually chill with Inko and roll his eyes with her over dumb class antics (when he isn’t in the midst of it), it’s great. And he’s not exempt from the big sister treatment either; she drags him off to rest after class when he’s overexerted himself with Toshinori, teases him with her mysterious collection of pictures from when they were young, helps him with his work if he actually needs it (which he usually doesn’t, he’s a smart guy). Enji has already been subject to this in the past, of course, because that’s just how Inko is, but now it happens even more, because they’re all on campus anyway and why wait in the 1-A dorm building or in her actual room when she can look after her dumb family who keeps training too hard? Still, it isn’t until around their second year that things change again, in a good way.

Because the one who breaks that barrier between them, and calls the other “cousin”? It’s not Inko, it’s all Enji.

He does it offhandedly - they’re discussing something and he casually calls her “cousin” partway through. It catches her so off guard she freezes for a moment before rolling with it, but Deku and Shouto heard it all, and they’re smiling. It’s a pretty big step between them, since Enji has been denying the cousin card for about a decade at that point, it makes them happy to see. Outwardly and inwardly, nothing changes. But it shows that Enji’s willing to accept that relationship now, that he’s leaving himself open to his friends and family and accepting them as long as they’ll accept him. Inko’s honored, and more than happy to start calling him cousin after all this time. Sure she’s more like the big sister, but this is how the two of them roll, you know? It doesn’t change how much they care about each other.

And there you have it, Anon! Some insights into the complicated relationship between Inko and Enji, built entirely around childhood respect, bribery/teasing blackmail through adorable photos from their childhood, and Inko’s undefeatable Mom for All habits.

#boku no hero academia #bnha #my hero academia #mha #ageswap au #novelist answers #anonymous #inko #endeavor #long post #they care a lot but just don't say or show it as much as they can or would like u know?#enji's relationship w class 1-a alone helps him work through a lot of his issues #inko is incredibly patient and deserves all the awards #as u can see i love both of them #i love the fact that most of their bonding is just heavy teasing and a good understanding + respect of each other #when u grow up in almost but not quite the same house and place as each other #there's ways u function that don't make sense to others but work for u #people often wonder how they get along and the answer is they're used to it #inko knows enji i sweetheart deep down that just wants to be a hero #enji knows inko is someone he can trust through and through and that she is worthy of that trust and respect #it's interesting

19 notes · View notes