Alia Luria

Well, I am already over 30, but barely, so here a list of 150 things that you should do before 30 that I found on a blog. What I’ve done is bolded. I hope to tackle a lot of the European ones this coming summer!

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb [No, but I did pet a baby elephant!]
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving [No, but I walked on the bottom of the ocean floor!]
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge [No, but I walked the Brooklyn Bridge!]
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

I guess that’s not really bad… Some of that stuff, I’ll never do, and some I might do in the next couple years. I think the whole before you are 30 thing is a crock. You are never too old to experience new and interesting adventures!

Well, I decided to register a new domain and create a photo blog where I can post some of my more favorite photos. At this point, it is very sparsely populated. I am posting photos slowly, and I will be getting more and more up over time. I am posting them based on the EXIF, which means that they will display in the order that I have taken the photograph, rather than the order in which I post them. So, if you are interested, give it a look. It is called Alia Travels the World and is located at http://www.aliatravels.com.

It has been a really long time since I’ve updated. I have had an extremely busy but rewarding summer working. Now, however, is the time for vacation! On Saturday, David and I are leaving for a week long cruise to the Caribbean. Our first stop will be Nassau, followed by St. Thomas and St. Maarten. I will post photos upon my return!

I may try to transition this into a travel blog, given that I am no longer living in Japan, but I plan to continue to travel. I haven’t decided yet.

So, I still haven’t had time to do a proper update. I promise to try to work on one. I haven’t even gotten all my photos from kyoto tagged properly, but at least they are all up. I’m also getting sick, which stinks. I’ve had a sore throat all day, and now I’m feeling dizzy and my eyes are feeling puffy, so fun fun. I should probably try to get to sleep early tonight, but we’ll see what happens with Amey.

Also, I made a stop at Kiddy Land today and loaded up on random bunny stuff! Woo hoo, bunny stuff! :)

Okay, so that was kind of cheesy. Spring break has officially started here at TUJ, and Amey made it safely to Tokyo today. I picked her up from the airport, and everything went smoothly until we got home and found that Sakura House had not brought by the futon they were supposed to provide (they collected my 32,000 yen guest fee but never scheduled someone to bring by the futon). So, I gave her my mattress pad and an extra comforter I had, and she luckily had a travel pillow. They promised to bring the bedding tomorrow and to refund me 2000 yen (one night’s fee). So, at least there is that…

We are leaving for Kyoto Sunday early, so tomorrow we have to pack, organize all our train info and hotel info and reserve our Moonlight Nagara train back to Tokyo on Sunday night. I’m pretty excited for Kyoto. It should be beautiful, although probably still a bit cold. Not looking forward to the massively long train rides, but hopefully we can just chill through the first part of it anyway.

Anyway, that’s my short update for now. Ja mata!

They ran a video report about the recent tornadoes in Tennessee. Someone near and dear to my heart has family and friends there, so I’ve been kind of keeping track of it all day. Well, they ran a video, and in the video, the talk about how there is a lot of damage in Jackson, TN. Then they say that are going to go to a reporter in Jackson, TN. Then they put up a graphic on the screen of Mississippi, with a label that says: Jackson, MS. And then the guy comes on the screen and says, “I’m here in Jackson, TN.” I just love the attention to detail and care that CNN graphic artists and producers clearly feel for those tragically killed and injured that they can’t be bothered to even get the state right…

Love it.

Anyway, here is a link to the video: CNN can’t tell MS from TN. You have to click on the one called “Dozens die in tornadoes.”

So, as you all know, I’ve been doing more with video since I’ve been in Japan. I try to take interesting videos and post them up here, and I also have tried making some compilations and such. Well, I took a 20+ minute video of the Asimo robot while I was at the National Museum of Nature and Science. It ended up being a 1.9 gigabyte file, and every time I tried to move it from my camera to my computer, one or the other crapped out and the file wouldn’t transfer. I even tried using Image Capture instead of iPhoto. Maybe if I had my Canon software installed, I could have gotten around it. Either way, it wasn’t working. So, needing DVD-RWs anyway (because I need to start backing these massive files up so that my hard drive doesn’t fill up), I headed to the Togoshi-Ginza shopping street near my apartment after class and looked for an SD reader. I found one in a technology/office supplies/stationary shop. It’s was a neat little place. They only had a reader that reads 15 different formats. It was only 2940 yen, so like $27, and it even reads micro SD, so I can get a micro SD card for my Casio cell phone. That’s good news, because my Mac doesn’t read my Casio cell phone, but with the micro SD reader, I can just save photos to a micro SD card and get them off my camera using the reader. Problem solved!

Now I just need to start burning movie projects to DVD. I already got the older family movie projects onto one disk. Josh and Melissa’s wedding video will take up a whole other disk, and hopefully, I can fit the Kamakura and Sumo iMovie projects on one disk together. I guess I could have just bought a huge external hard drive, but this is probably an easier solution for now. I will invest in an external hard drive when I get back to the states probably (if I intend to keep making movies, which I might).

Anyway, I should probably do some reading for class while all of this burning is going on. I didn’t really do much so far this week, so nothing interesting to report. I will get the photos/videos of the robots and other nature stuff up as soon as possible.

Well, ja mata!

So, today was pretty relaxed. My back is still hurting me (which is kind of a concern, because in the past, the pain would have subsided by now – but at least it’s bearable), so I wanted to take it easy, yet again. Some of us in the program decided to go out for dinner. Finding a place for more than 3 or 4 people to eat at a time usually requires a lot of effort in the Mita area, but Olivia came through and thought of the curry place we’d eaten at a few days ago that had a large table in the front of the restaurant. We pretty much took up most of it, but at least the restaurant got a bunch of money from us. Who knows if they’ll let us do that again though!

It ended up being 10 of us, and I have a couple photos. Since I haven’t actually talked too much about the people I see on a semi-daily basis, I might as well do a little intro here.

Table / My Side

From the back to the front we have: Olivia (a good friend of mine who lives upstairs from me!), Christiana (who I only recently met, although she sits next to me in Chinese Business Law), me you probably know if you are at this page, Justin (who I started talking to on AIM well before classes started and who actually sits on the other side of me in Chinese Business Law), and Patrick (who I met after arriving but who cracks me up – best stories!).

Table / Other Side

This photo was taken without the flash, so it’s not as clear. But, from the back: Erin (who I have only hung out with a couple of times, but she spent a lot of time in Korea, so her perspective is always interesting), Becky (a girl I met since arriving – very nice and has been sick as well, so she has a lot of catching up to do), Becca (speaks a lot of Japanese – very handy to have at dinner :) – she was moving her head, so this is a terrible shot of her), Allen (Cool guy who lived up in Northern Japan for a long time, so also speaks Japanese), and Houston (Don’t ever believe a thing he says, but he’s hilarious! ;) )

Anyway, so that was my evening. We really just monopolized the hugest table in the restaurant and ate and talked. Then some of us went to a coffee shop for like 20 minutes, where we ran into another TUJ student and then headed home.

Tomorrow, a bunch of us are going to Kamakura, which is the ancient capital of Japan. There, we will check out a couple shrines and The Great Buddha and then head to Yokohama to visit the Chinatown. I’m really looking forward to it. I may go back there again in April for a festival and to see it once the flowers have started to spring up (hopefully).

Also, some people were going to go to the Ueno Zoo on Sunday, and I was going to join them, but now I see that the 27th is the last day that the Robot exhibit is going on at the Ueno Science Museum, so I may hit that instead (or also depending on time). I REALLY want to see that exhibit before it is gone. I wish it was staying longer so that David and/or Amey could see it, but I shouldn’t miss it if I have the opportunity to go.

P.S. Japan has every terrifying flavor of Kit Kat imaginable, and I broke down and finally purchased a weird flavor – Apple! It is actually pretty tasty. They love to mix fruit and chocolate here. :)

Anyway, ja mata!

Well, I’m getting on a plane in 9 hours and leaving for Tokyo. There was a lot of drama over the last couple weeks with my health, but everything seems to finally be going well, and I’m on my way to Japan tomorrow morning. :) When I get settled into my hotel, I will update peeps with photos and/or some kind of video post. I received an iphone for Christmas from my amazing boyfriend, so I will hopefully be able to post mobile photos to flickr via wifi. I know I can’t use it as a phone while I’m over there, but it seems like it will be very, very useful for many other things, so I’m super excited to have one. :)

Anyway, I’m sleepy and I have an early flight. So, ciao everyone, and my next update will be from Tokyo! Also, you can check twitter for mobile updates.

Well, it is getting close to go time, and here’s my current updates:

1. I got a kidney infection this week. Hopefully, this won’t stop me from going, but I’m on some heavy antibiotics to make sure that I kick out this infection and can go.

2. My visa arrived today. I got my passport back today, with my visa pasted inside. Yay!

3. I got approved for a transfer-fee-free credit card (use Capital One if you are traveling abroad), and it should allow me to pay for my rent and all of that jazz without the exchange fee that most banks use. Hopefully it will arrive by next week, and I can have it before I leave.

4. I got the vast majority of my hair chopped off. It’s still kind of freaking me out. Maybe I’ll like it better in a couple weeks when it grows out a half an inch. :) I guess my stylist took to heart my statements that I wouldn’t be getting it cut for four months while I’m in Tokyo.

5. I’m now thinking I might have to take two major pieces of luggage instead of one. The one bag was packed so tight, and I still had a lot of other stuff I felt I should bring.

And, I’m totally a dork. I forgot my heavy winter coat in Gainesville, so I will have to pick it up when I go to feed my cats.

Well, that’s all for now!