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Welcome to Rain Symphony (formerly known as Forgotten Hope), phoenix's weblog/personal site. Here you will find my thoughts about my life, as well as whatever other random things I decide to put on here. Enjoy your stay.
Vacation!
So I'm leaving today and I'll be away until August 23.
I'm really excited, as I've only been to Europe once (and that was for a week); this time I'll get to visit a lot of places. Can't wait for my flight this afternoon.
First stop...London!
Posted by phoenix on 2009-07-24 ~
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Lazy Summer Days
I've been staying at home for most of the summer since the incident with the summer job, which I can't complain about except that I think I'm wrecking my eyesight by spending too much time CGing stuff in Corel Painter. (Today I have an eye doctor's appointment, which will be the moment of truth. Sigh.)
Next week I'm leaving for a month-long vacation in Europe, which I'm pretty psyched about. I've been trying to teach myself a bit of elementary Italian, because my dad keeps scoffing at me and saying that we'll be stressed out in Italy since we don't know Italian, though I'm thinking I should go to the library tomorrow and borrow some French phrasebooks to brush up on my French, too. I mean, I took AP French and got a 5 on the AP test and all, but I've always felt that speaking was my weakest area in French (and in all languages, actually), so learning some more vocab to use in conversations would probably be helpful.
Actually, I'm sort of getting interested in learning languages in general. Well, I was always interested, but now I feel more motivated to pick up books and try to learn (of course, this is right before my vacation and then the start of college, so sadly I probably won't have much time to do anything). I'd like to know a bit more about Finnish and Norwegian and of course Japanese. Sometimes, I feel like I should try to become fluent in Chinese (I'm only semi-fluent, and my reading skills deteriorate exponentially when I'm not taking a Chinese class), but then again I was never able to understand Chinese culture and don't have much interest in going to China or mingling with native Chinese speakers often.
As I mentioned before, I've been doing a lot of CG work. Currently I'm working on a set of five semi-realistic headshots that's making me want to poke my eyeballs out... I've also been doing a bit of writing and slowly taking over the house with Hetalia papercrafts. Muahahahaha.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-07-17 ~
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Follow-Up/Sojourn/Impasse
Just a quick follow-up to my last post: I did quit, and strangely, he seemed to act a lot nicer to us after I said I would quit.
Last week I came back from Alfred's glasses (er, Texas), where I stayed for five days with my family. We were in Houston for most of the time, though we drove to Austin on the last day to drop my sister off at summer camp. The reason we were there is that my dad has a job offer, so my family may move, although it doesn't affect me that much either way as I'm going off to college.
I'm at a standstill with my art right now, which is making me antsy. I don't have art block or anything (too many ideas in my head), but my Corel Painter trial expired and now I'm waiting for my copy of the real thing to arrive. Or, to be technical, I'm waiting to receive my serial number, since I have the program already.
I tried using Corel Painter Essentials, which is a dumbed-down version, and it felt as good as using Painter, but...well, it's too watered-down. (Doesn't even have opacity locks, for crying out loud.) I like Photoshop fine for coloring, though I do prefer Painter's sensitivity and ability to emulate natural media, but I can hardly ever draw lineart in Photoshop (usually, I have to draw my hand and scan it in). I tried using Paint Tool SAI, which so far I haven't found a single negative review about, but I just don't like it. I don't know why; it's the feel of the program, or something.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-06-29 ~
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Messy Drama
Remember that summer job I talked about? Yeah. I've already quit.
Here's the deal: the guy I was working for was not very nice, to put it lightly. (You know you're in Hell when you have a Chinese boss.) On the first day, he expected me to know how to do everything even though it was my first day and he didn't explain anything to me before setting me to work. He got mad at me for doing things "the wrong way," even though he didn't tell me "the right way" of doing things; he said I was less qualified than one of his other new employees, etc.
I was pretty upset when I came home, but my mom told me that: a) I didn't have anything else to do over the summer; b) I needed work experience; and c) I needed to learn how to deal with different kinds of people. She called the guy (he's my parents' accountant, by the way) later and they had a chat. The next day, he was very nice to me, which made me suspicious. I mean, people don't change their attitudes overnight like that; I felt that either his new attitude was superficial or his old one was.
That, to me, led to some unsettling implications: he might have treated me differently on the second day because he felt guilty after my mom's call, or he might have treated me differently on the first day because he was biased and he had never heard of the college I'm attending in the fall, leading him to assume that it was a "bad" college. But that's simply worker discrimination, which shouldn't be allowed in workplaces in America. (As I said, though, you know you're in Hell when you have a Chinese boss.)
So I still felt uneasy, even more so when he gave me some banana bread as a gift. Bosses normally don't give employees gifts, as far as I know. My mom thought we should write him a thank-you e-mail, so we did, although she included some suggestions that I learn the accounting software so as to be more helpful at work. We meant no harm, and the e-mail I wrote for her (as Chinese was her first language, she's not that great at writing and usually recruits me to write in English for her) was completely diplomatic and expressed nothing except good intentions.
On the third day, my boss mostly left me alone, which was a relief, but my job was getting more tedious by the day: stuffing envelopes, unstuffing envelopes, gluing them shut--and he had like fifteen boxes full of envelopes. No, I didn't really enjoy my job at all. It was all dull office work. I've done office work before, as a volunteer at an office in a hospital, but we only had to work three hours a day, and I could always chat with my sister; at my job, I had to do office work for six hours a day, and I didn't dare talk with anyone for fear of incurring my boss's wrath.
Yesterday, my mom came home and told me about the reply she received to her e-mail. It was downright nasty. It said things like, "we are not an educational institution or charity," "anyone who doesn't know how to use the software will mess up and put garbage in to get garbage out," "running a business is costly," etc. etc. It was totally uncalled for. I got the impression he was saying, "You don't understand how hard it is to run a business," and even the implication that he didn't want me as his employee. I'm not overreacting--after years of taking honors English classes and AP Literature, I know how to read tone. Besides, my family does know full well how hard it is to run a business--my dad runs a medical research lab, which is even more costly.
So I decided to quit. Unfortunately, the whole mess sparked a huge argument between my parents, and now I'm feeling down. I'm not worried about staying at home during the summer; my only concern was appearing unproductive if people asked me what I did during these months.
I just want to wash my hands clean of the entire affair.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-06-19 ~
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Summertime
Soo I have a lot of things I want to do and a lot of things I'm going to do over the summer.
First off, I have a job three days a week. I'm not exactly a fan of it, but after my terrible first day yesterday it's become somewhat bearable. I'm also going to be traveling to Texas for a few days next week and Europe from July to August, which is going to be exciting. I'll have to read a bunch of travel books in advance, though. And I have to get my college stuff in order and whatnot. (I'm probably going to have to use Bootcamp and install Windows XP on my Mac for college. I've had issues with Bootcamp before, so I hope it actually works this time.)
Stuff I want to do: I'm still in my Hetalia phase, so I'm planning on making a boatload of papercrafts, making my cosplay costume for next year's Anime Boston (my sister's going to be Prussia and I'm going to be England), more animated avatars, more artwork in Corel Painter/Photoshop, hopefully reading up on some world history so I can write Hetalia fanfictions...
...Sorry this turned out to be a shopping list. As always, I have so much I want to do and so little time...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-06-17 ~
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