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Quick introduction about myself. I'll probably brush by some topics that I meant to blog about later, but as I don't usually do this, I probably have a good amount to say anyways. I was born in New York but I attribute myself as a Californian. Moved there when I was about 5-6, and have bounced between North and Southern Cali mostly due to my parents divorce. I have a sister who's currently going to college in San Fransisco, and I have relatives all over the world (notably in Australia). I get along well with my mom, but I'm more or less estranged from my dad. That's about it on my family.
In terms of hobbies, gaming was and still is one of the few things I can consistently do, purely because I don't particularly need to know people in order to do it, attributing significantly to my lack of a social life, the moves didn't help either. I eventually picked up TCGs as I grew up, Pokemon being the first, but honestly, no one knew what the hell was going on, and bought it purely because the cartoon was cool at the time. I eventually faded out of it, but it eventually lead to an infatuation with anime, which continues today. I went onto enjoy Yu-Gi-Oh! about the time of it's release and was doing fairly well at it, until I lost interest in it. I can't remember why, but it's likely due to the introduction to Magic. M:TG was huge for me through junior and senior year of high school. It was for a brief period afterwards too, but due to circumstances out of my control, I had to stop.
My Starcraft career is nothing spectacular. I played fastest, blew through the campaign with cheats, and settled with UMS, particularly interested with RPGs. That's the majority of what I played after all.
Some years later, I was introduced to WoW. Addicted for 4 years, currently 1 year not played, I'll post more about this period of my life in a different blog post.
I was looking for a new game to play about the time Starcraft 2 came out. I was in the beta, and working on actually being good at something for once that involved multiplayer. Watching a lot of day[9]'s stuff at the recommendation of a friend eventually got me from silver in the beta to diamond in the release. However, my WoW intuition kicked in with the advent of achievements, and I think I'm like 28th or something on achievements in NA, as of this post (4200). I do plan on getting better, and competing the future.
Currently I'm military, straight out of high school. Branch of choice: Air Force. A common question that I get asked is simply, why did I join. Honestly, to get away from my overbearing dad, but I tell people education benefits to avoid awkward conversations. Going on 4 years now, and have mixed feelings about it. I came in initially as a linguist, intending on learning Chinese (I'm Chinese, so I figured I was a shoe in). They gave me Russian. It was a pain, and I might make a blog post about that experience at one point or another in the future. I'm at the point where I'm attempting to decide whether or not to stay in. I'm leaning heavily towards going for the college route that I didn't take, but time will tell.
Also, in the military, apparently it's an oddity if you don't smoke or drink. Also, the fact that I'm a virgin much like a good chunk of the gaming community has also fascinated my workplace. I suppose at 22, it's weird in today's society, but that's another topic.
Currently overseas. I shouldn't complain, but I do, and that would be a whole topic in itself.
In a couple years, I wanna get out and go to college in probably accounting. I wanted a stable job that I could at least support myself while I strive to get better at Starcraft. Progaming is a dream of mine, but if I don't get there, at least I'll have fun along the way, or I assume.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. I'll post more as I think of it.
 
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welcome! i hope you become a progamer.
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Welcome to TL !
I heard russian was the hardest language on earth 
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On September 21 2010 19:58 endy wrote:Welcome to TL ! I heard russian was the hardest language on earth
As abstract and hard to define a concept as that is, I don't think I've heard too many people citing russian amongst* the hardest languages to learn (unlike chinese ). But I guess that depends a lot on your first language too.
(*edit: doing some random research, I have to admit it certainly seems to be up there close to the top in some surveys and studies, though rarely in the top 3)
@OP, welcome to TL, enjoy your stay. And don't get too bummed out if you don't turn out to be a progamer
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On September 21 2010 20:11 538 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 19:58 endy wrote:Welcome to TL ! I heard russian was the hardest language on earth As abstract and hard to define concept as that is, I don't think I've heard too many people citing russian amongst the hardest languages to learn (unlike chinese ).
And Hungarian. Damn, I've been in Hungary many times and I still don't know more than a few words.
edit: and welcome!
Telling your work place you're a virgin at 22 makes you a cool guy in my book.
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Chinese, Russian, Farsii... those are all pretty tough to learn. Good luck with your progaming dreams. If I joined the service I would be doing something like you since I am white and fluent in chinese.
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preedit^^:
The following is 1-dimensional and not thought through, i just followed the idea from the narrow perspective i wanted to, ignoring everything contradicting it:p. So don't flame me please, but feel free to correct.
Out of the blue i would say it is more difficult to learn a strongly inflected language like russian for someone with only background in a weakly inflecting language like english, since new grammatical categories which do not exist in the english language have to be learned through hard work(i.e. seeing them often enough in context to get the relation it builds) let alone getting used to looking for context relations in single words when you are used to an array of words that conveys most stuff from objectional meanings to relations etc. which makes it seem quite annoying to examine every word's inflection instead of looking up its meaning in a dictionary . The russian on the other hand, mainly has to learn a lot of expressions, which is less hard work, because it requires less analytical effort. It just requires exposure but not analysis. ( Ofc. you can learn russian that way too, but i think it will take longer without the analytical effort when you are an adult).
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I've never met someone completely fluent in russian (besides ppl from russia and surrounding countries ofc), you can always tell and it isn't just the accent. It is really complicated, I can't even think of enough of a reason for someone to study it.
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It was excessively complicated. Purely off grammar, since I spoke Chinese growing up at home, but spoke English everywhere else, I had to vary my speaking styles pretty consistently. I think motivation was a key issue, as I was unable to focus through the year long course, as obviously it wasn't what I wanted to do.
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EPT
