ALEXICON

anotherlexicon: I’ve been back in the USA for about a month...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 01:13:54 -0500

The bridge I walked across everyday to school. My favorite moment

The Thai way

Perusing markets in the sweltering heat

Pineapples, guavas, papayas, oh my!!! Ugh, withdrawal syndrome...

School transportation system

Eating at the Noodle Brothers every night. EVERY NIGHT.

Conversations with your Thai locals

The hunts for trashcans in Thailand dead-end here.

My fellow exchange students! Love and miss you guys =]

anotherlexicon:

I’ve been back in the USA for about a month now, which has given me the chance to look back on my time in Thailand and reflect on what it was that I actually did for 5 months. It may seem like I did a lot of traveling and sight-seeing, but that paints an unrealistic picture of what my life was really like. The mere fact that I was living in Bangkok (one of the most interesting cities in the world, no doubt) was adventure enough, although I probably took that for granted when choosing blog content. In fact, my best memories were the daily, mundane things that I didn’t even think about. Like walking to school everyday, exchanging smiles with the familiar street vendors along the way. Or standing face-to-shoulder with 50 people on a bus that should really only be able to accommodate 25. Or trying time and time again to conquer the “squatter toilet,” which would never fail to reveal itself at the most inopportune moments.

While I may have not mentioned them before, now that I don’t encounter those rewarding little adventures anymore, I realize how important they were to me. Enough so that now I am starting to question myself on how I fit into this world. It’s quite a strange feeling being thrown into an unfamiliar way of living all alone, slowly learning to adjust, only to be yanked right back out and into the old way, as if the new one never happened. I hate to say it, but you start to feel more irrelevant than you ever have before. Like you’ve lived a whole bunch in such a short amount of time, but you have to pretend you’re “the same” in fear of seeming snobby or too self-satisfied. I definitely fell in love with Thailand, and am seriously counting down the days until I can return.

I guess the only appropriate way for me to approach these feelings is to end this blog with a post containing some of my favorite scenes from Bangkok, and to encourage everyone who sees them to go abroad if they can. It was a ridiculous, revealing, overwhelming semester, and I can’t overemphasize how grateful I am to have been given this opportunity. You may have reservations whether or not you can because of this or that, but just trust me on this one. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

Hopefully, this time in my life and everything I gained from it will manifest into some awesome contribution I will make to the world someday, but for now I’ll just leave with a shameless plug to my non-exciting, non-travel blog of my American exploits. Keep up with me at ALEXICON.TUMBLR.COM, and you can judge for yourself whether how truly “life-changing” my Thai experience was. Later, y’all!!!

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome baaaack…

Distracting myself in any way possible.

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 23:35:56 -0500

Why have I not ~~finished~~started my final paper or gotten ANY packing done yet?? The procrastination frustration is kicking in now…finals time sucks, no matter what country you’re in.

During our visit to Khao Yai National Park, I was really, really...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:41:31 -0400

During our visit to Khao Yai National Park, I was really, really happy. While sitting in the songthaew, we could see the countryside unfolding before us. I guess good vibes are contagious.

anotherlexicon: I really like training at the Muay Thai gym,...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 05:38:17 -0400

There he is! (Olympics on TV, whaaaaaaat)

Coach Joe!

:']

Alexa and Kelsey circa 2008!

Best Friend TJ doe

To old friends

anotherlexicon:

I really like training at the Muay Thai gym, even though it’s humid as hell and the language barrier is really prominent. It brings me back to being in Taiwan, when I trained at NTCPE (a Taiwanese athlete college) for three grueling weeks with Stanford. It was my last trip out of the country, and also the last major trip I took by myself.

Speaking of Taekwondo in Taiwan, one of the coaches who trained me there was on TV coaching an Olympic competitor from Taipei today. You can imagine how much I freaked out from excitement when I saw Coach Joe in the corner, as if I wasn’t freaking out enough at the fact that I was FINALLY getting to watch televised Olympic Taekwondo (Thaaaank you, BBC!). It was seriously a blast of nostalgia, because that month was one of the best experiences of my life which I often think back on. I met so many friends and we trained so hard, I am even currently wearing a shirt that one of the Taiwanese teammates gave me before I left from there! I really wish that I had kept in better touch with everyone. Being in the Taiwanese airport for 6 hours last week also brought back a bunch of memories, just from walking around and seeing familiar oddities, such as pictures of the famous “Meat Shaped Stone.” (Look it up)

HOLY CRAP. I just realized that the summer I went to Taiwan was literally two weeks before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. I remember because right after returning, I went to visit my cousins in Hawaii where I practiced once with their TKD master, who was just about to leave coach the Chinese womens’ Olympic team. Wow. I’m always being reminded that there are no coincidences in life.

Hi, Welcome to Thailand :D

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 03:56:00 -0400

Thank you very much! =]

SPAMSPAMSPAM

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 23:08:41 -0400

anotherlexicon.tumblr.com

I’m in BKK, bitch.

Goodbye, Summer 2012. Thanks to all my friends and fam who made...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:44:01 -0400

Goodbye, Summer 2012. Thanks to all my friends and fam who made me remember why home is really where the heart is. See y’all in Thailand! (Taken with Instagram)

Alexicon Across Borders: 3 a.m. in California

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:11:03 -0400

Alexicon Across Borders: 3 a.m. in California:

anotherlexicon:

I am leaving for Thailand in less than 20 hours now, and I still am not packed. This is quite normal behavior for me. So here’s what you need to know in order to continue reading this brain dump (which you should, because I’m really funny.):

My name is Alexa, and I will be in Thailand for 5…

I’m actually terrified right now. But in a good way. Haven’t packed yet. Follow my travel blog!

I made this video for my documentary class earlier this year,...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 03:26:00 -0400

I made this video for my documentary class earlier this year, but I wasn’t able to post it during the competition season because it contained pieces of Ascension’s All Cal set.

On both my Tumblr and Facebook feeds, posters advertising the auditions for this year’s 220 team (a competitive hip hop dance group based in San Diego) have been circulating. I don’t think I actually blogged about this, but last year I tried out for 220 just for shits and giggles with some of my more serious dance friends. I made it as far as callbacks, but essentially missed the final cut to make the team. I was not expecting much more, as I had gone in entirely unprepared and uncommitted to spending another intense year of being in a dance group. I learned my lesson from being on Ascension.

I love hip hop, but having never danced before I was so naive about what it takes to be in the top. I had believed that being on a great dance team would just be a neat little thing on the side, all fun and games and making new friends, when in reality so much goes on behind the scenes to create the 7 minutes you see performed. I never considered the concepts of “training” or “learning different styles” to be essential to even share the stage with a majority of dancers in shows like Vibe and Body Rock, but they are. It’s a job. It requires a whole lot of fortitude and passion (not to mention time!) and is why I ultimately decided against pursuing dance seriously. Even though I was told many times that I was pretty natural and I just needed to train more to become really good, it was just not something I thought was worth distracting myself with in the grand scheme of my life. I’d just be taking the spot of someone who really wanted it.

But nevertheless, seeing these flyers has catapulted me back into the nostalgia of my younger high school days of obsessive dance video Youtubing and shameless mirror booty-popping, and I still think about how this year would have panned out had I stuck with dancing. Would I have been happier? Would it have been as hard as I assumed it would? How far could I have gone with it?

This video highlights the choreographer and professional dancer, Paul Ross. He is someone who knows what it means to invest himself into dance, and manages to stay focused on his passion even though conventional notions of “success” may not recognize how he chooses to live his life.

It also highlights my fatass crush on him. Swoonswoonswoon, no one even understands.

Hello Tumblr. Back again, after yet another embarrassingly long...

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:24:00 -0400

International Center Scholarship Dinner

Sarah, my tkd buddy. Destination: France

Awwwww yeahhhh

Hello Tumblr. Back again, after yet another embarrassingly long hiatus.

The topic of this post is Thailand, Thailand, Thailand. OK, I haven’t consciously been keeping secret the fact that I am going to study there this fall, especially if you have seen these clues on my Twitter or Instagram. But after getting so many basic questions about it from even my closest friends, I realized that I had been wrongly assuming you all can read my mind, and I don’t need to explain my plans. So I should probably share all the boring details I’ve been storing in this noggin before I up and desert you all again. Haha, alright, so here’s a little FAQ for my trip:

I am leaving for Thailand on August 1st, where I will be staying for 5 months. I will be back in San Diego in January. Yes, yes, “That’s so long!” is what I’ve heard most people exclaim. But really, I don’t think it is very much time at all. Thailand, like any culture, is so rich with ethnic diversity and history, that five months is barely enough time to scratch the surface of understanding this world. Having said that, it is a very important itch, and this trip has been a long time coming.

I’ll be studying in Bangkok, at Thammasat University. Although I have not officially signed up for classes, the ones I intend on taking are Society and Culture of Thailand, Southeast Asian Affairs, Buddhism in Thailand, etc. I’m hoping to use most of them toward my Political Science major, and they are all specific to Thai and Asian culture.

Why Thailand? Well this is a long answer…

Thailand and Thammasat University is perfect for my major and interests. Thammasat is where many future Thai lawyers and political figures have been known to study at. It’s the Harvard of Thailand, if you will. Moreover, the country has just undergone a significant political revolution to democracy in the past few years, and a lot of the uprisings originated at Thammasat, making it notorious for activism and democratic teachings. I think the place and timing couldn’t be a better fit for me, honestly. GOD, I feel like I’m filling out scholarship apps again. Which brings me to the next point…
Thailand is DIRT CHEAP. Like, insanely cheap. The conversion rate from the US dollar to the Thai baht is 1:31. Meaning good food will be available for a little over a dollar, massages are being accounted for in my weekly schedules, and the rent I’ll be paying over there is less than half of what I’ll be paying at my apartment in SD. Anyone want presents?
I really didn’t want to study in a European or Western culture. To me, the point of going to study abroad is to learn and truly experience a culture and way of thinking that is completely different from your own. I think it’s important to take yourself out of your own comfort zone in order to learn. I was actually considering Ghana for a while too, but eventually decided against it. Maybe 4th year…
Finally, for some reason I’ve always felt kind of drawn to Thai culture. It could be because my mom is from Burma, which is directly adjacent to Thailand (I’ll actually be visiting it with her and my aunts come Mid-November, more to say on this later). It could be my childhood enchantment by movies like The Legend of Suriyothai and Brokedown Palace. It could just be my love of curry and rice noodles. Whatever it is, I’m really excited and confident that I made the right decision.

Will I keep a travel blog? Probably. Will I be better at updating it than this blog? No promises. But you should all follow it anyways! I actually plan to do a lot of writing, filming and photo journalism during these five months, which is one of the other reasons I’m going to a place as “exotic” as Thailand. Lots of material, unlike white bread La Jolla. And I’ll figure out some way to make my online updates more habitual.

I am under no illusions here, I know that this trip will be a significant lifestyle change for me. Hopefully it will make me stronger, less naive, more internationally savvy. At the very least, it will make me fat. DON’T JUDGE ME.

Alexa! when do you leave for thailand??

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:14:48 -0400

Anonymous! I leave on August 1st!

take more work pictures!! :)

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:23:43 -0400

Sup.

=[

Thu, 31 May 2012 08:40:16 -0400

*sigh.

go on skype more often, I miss yo face :(((

Sun, 27 May 2012 17:28:11 -0400

Haha aww. This must be either Casey or Patricia, because those are the only two I show my face to on Skype. I miss both of you!

Megan and Edwin came to stay in our apartment for the Sun God...

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:24:00 -0400

I want her dimples

And his burger.

Life is better with a fried egg sandwich

Round 1

Round 2.

At the museum of contemporary art

Later that night at Vallarta's...

Best fish burritos. Get that taco outtt

Megan and Edwin came to stay in our apartment for the Sun God weekend festivities. They came to visit all the way from SF, coming in on Thursday morning and leaving on Sunday afternoon. So the morning after Sun God, we took the bus to downtown to have brunch at The Cottage. I guess everyone had the same exact idea as us, because we actually didn’t get seated until 2pm and our meal turned into a late lunch. The place is packed on weekends, but at least they gave us free coffee and cake while we waited, and it was a beautiful day in La Jolla so we walked around a little bit.

The Cottage is still the cutest place in La Jolla to eat on lazy weekends. They seat you outside, and the service is great. Yerrie is a champion eater who polished off TWO dishes all on her own. And it’s not like they give you super small portions or anything, I mean, Edwin couldn’t even finish his plate. I swear I don’t know where she puts it all.

After eating such a cutesy and pricey brunch, we were craving a cheap, greasy, San Diego staple later on. Burritos and pollo asada fries at Vallarta’s for dinner.

DARY. Last Friday was the notoriously belligerent annual Sun God...

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:14:00 -0400

Don't leave me, honey boo boo child!!!

Main stage tent: Dia Frampton

Z can give it. Susan can GET IT.

All the way from SF! =]]

HAHA ooooo no.

Yerrie was my pimp at the dance tent.

And Shellsbells will be down the hall.

Apartmentmates for next year + Tania

I THOUGHT I was starving...MIStake.

DARY.

Last Friday was the notoriously belligerent annual Sun God Festival. It is an all day music festival that has been a UCSD tradition since 1984. I actually did the research for an article on the history of Sun God for The Guardian and, while rummaging through archives, I found out some pretty interesting trivia bits. For example, did you guys know that No Doubt performed here back in the 90’s?? At least, this was before they blew up and hit it big, so no one at UCSD back then knew who the hell they were (neither did a tour group of 6th graders whom the other day I tried to impress by sharing that little tidbit. I told you I’m old…) Last year, you may remember we had Wiz Khalifa and Big Sean as headliners, but they went with a more alternative (and old) genre this year. Silversun Pickups? Interesting…

But Sun God is by far the biggest event on campus, as it is the day where all us nerdy UCSD students let loose FOR ONCE in our studious little lives. The tradition goes: start the madness super early and, depending on how well you pace yourself, you may manage to last until the end of the day.

During the “fancy” brunch we decided to throw at my apartment, we set off the smoke alarms at 10 in the morning -____- But right after we fanned our detector enough for it to stop, one of our neighbor’s alarms immediately started up. Figures. Around 5 or so, after hours of (literally) skipping around campus, I actually made my way out to the field to see the performers that no one seemed to really care about this year. I wasn’t very impressed, (other than by Dia Frampton who did a rendition of “The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room” by FOC!!) and was so distracted by everyone I ran into. I actually spent most of my time at the concert searching for more friends in the field, instead of watching the performers.

My roommate said I was like a child that she kept trying to track down, I couldn’t seem to stay in one place for very long all day. I must have been too excited to see people outside of Geisel library! But she finally found me in a circle with Ascension (my old dance team) giggin’ by the performer’s tent. My current and future roommates all decided that we would wear a uniform of Hawaiian shirts, so she was probably able to spot me somewhat easily amongst the sea of Greek drones in bro-tanks and neon trucker hats worn backwards.

After realizing I hadn’t eaten all day, it became an all-out journey to find somewhere that was open late in the booshy, retirement community of La Jolla. We finally settled on some Chinese restaurant in downtown and stuffed our stomachs, only to empty them soon after…Yeah. I was pretty much over Sun God after that.

See you next year Sun God! And once again, next year, can you actually be sunny? That’d be great, kthanks.

WHEN WILL YOU UPDATE YOUR TUMBLRRR???

Fri, 25 May 2012 00:12:30 -0400

Wait for it…wait for it…

Concentrating on things I don't like-

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:34:08 -0400

is difficult. I mean, torturously difficult. I literally have a month left in San Diego until January. I don’t want to study for a quiz in a class I could care less about. I should be out and about, living life, seeing people, tasting things and exploring the greatness that is Southern California! Or, at least be sleeping. *sighhhhh.

Shelly and I went thrifting in Pacific Beach today. WE ARE...

Mon, 14 May 2012 01:38:11 -0400

Shelly and I went thrifting in Pacific Beach today. WE ARE READYYY…

Today, as any dutiful child must know, is Mother’s Day. A...

Sun, 13 May 2012 13:24:00 -0400

Today, as any dutiful child must know, is Mother’s Day. A day meant to honor the woman who has defied the logics of physical space to push you out of a tiny hole into this vast world, is not one to be forgotten.

I understand that many people don’t have the same relationship with their moms as I do with mine, but that really saddens me. Growing up is tough, really tough. If I didn’t have my mom to support me, to cry and talk to, and to think I’m just about the coolest person in the world, I don’t know where I’d be as a person. No one would care about my self-indulgent issues with insecurity more than her, and no one else would give it to me straight, without bullshit, and keep me grounded like she does.

So here’s my tidbit of advice of the day: Do not underestimate the power in having a real conversation with her. Other than being your mother, she’s an actual person. You may be surprised that you actually understand why she does the things she does that drive you crazy, and she might learn a few things about where you’re coming from as well. I know that I’m lucky not to have an insane, diabolical mother like some children in the world. But for those of us who can, don’t miss out on knowing this woman who sacrifices just about everything for you.

I don’t say or show this very often, but thanks for being there, mom. You’re one of the most smart, savvy and strong people I know, and I’m grateful for everything you’ve taught me.

Alright people, get out of here now before I get any more sappy. It’s a slippery slope, my friends.