Mac, Mac, Mac

I'll admit it: Part of my decision to buy a Macbook earlier this year was influenced (strongly) by the Photo Booth option, which is a terrible reason to drop a thousand bucks on a laptop. But, in my defense, it wasn't the only reason I bought it. I love my Macbook for a myriad of other shallow reasons (like the three-finger-swipe across the mousepad to move back a page or forward a page).

Anyway, owning a Mac has been a lot of fun. Photo Booth probably accounts for 50% of that fun, especially for people as vain (and as easily amused) as both Ken and me. We don't use the option that often on our Macs (Ken is now a proud owner of the new Macbook Pro, by the by), but on a gray, drizzly day when we remember the option is there, we're likely to spend at least a good hour snapping stupid pictures of ourselves and giggling about how ugly we are. (At least you can't accuse us of not getting our money's worth!)

In retrospect, I can't figure out why it took so long for me to decide between a PC and a Mac. I really can't figure out why more people haven't jumped on the Mac bandwagon (with the exception of people like my dad who will remain faithful to PCs just out of principal). Why wouldn't you want a Mac when you can have this much fun?

With a Mac, you can become a gangster Russian:

You can become a fat-faced cyclops:

Or headless!

You can become possessed:

Or angelic:

You can become impossibly flexible:

Or just plain scary:

Although this last one might be Ken's specialty.

Or not....

I rest my case. These things provide hours of entertainment. Why waste your time in front of a PC when you can waste it elsewhere?

[I haven't played with Mac's iMovie program much yet, but now that Ken has a video camera, I plan to start toying with it soon. If the remainder of the year continues to be as rainy as it has been up to this point (leaving me with no choice but to sit with my computer or sit in a mud puddle), I might have a whole movie on my hands before 2010.]

Anyway. I love my Macbook. More than I love my Crocs. And this concludes my stupid post.

Quick, Long-Overdue Updates

It has been an eventful couple of months since I last left you. Somewhere between Christmas, New Year's, my birthday and now, I've managed to traipse around Indonesia for a couple of weeks, become a Mac person, sign a few more months of my life away to Korea, and get engaged (...to Ken, in case you were wondering).

Indonesia was as close to perfect as can be (it's definitely been added to my list of favorites). I can't believe it's been over a month since we made the dreaded trip back to Korea from Bali,

as I still seem to be in vacation mode (read: lazy). The weather was great in Indonesia, in spite of the rainy season. We had a few days of thunder storms, but since it was warm, tropical rain and not freezing, acid-rain-like drizzle (the kind we're experiencing in the lovely city of Ulsan), it didn't really matter. Anyway, I'll let you read the Lonely Planet or something to give you the full scoop on Indonesia (it would surely be more informative) but, in a tiny nutshell, the country itself and the people residing there were absolutely beautiful. We flew into Bali from Seoul (talk about weather shock) and then immediately made our way to Lombok for the holidays. Since we were planning to stay there over Christmas, we each decided to splurge a bit in lieu of Christmas gifts and stayed in the most amazing resort I will probably ever stay in. It was such a great experience that I've decided that dabbling in luxury can be a very dangerous thing, as it tends to make everything else seem not as great. Whatever the case, it was there on Christmas day that (drumroll, please!) Ken proposed to me! Merry Christmas to me (and an apparently stressful one for him, as he was sent into a panic-induced fit of diarrhea for the rest of the day).

From Lombok, we went to a tiny, very remote island called Gili Air. No cars, motorbikes, or fresh water; only pony carts for transportation and salty sea water for showering. I think I would have fallen in love with Gili Air a little more had it not been for the fact that during our stay there the angry, monsoon skies decided to let loose. It rained for three days straight, leaving us with nothing to do but swing in hammocks and take care of two little starving kittens we found on the island.

Our next destination was Ubud, Bali which turned out to be a gem of a place. Once again, Ubud--in a nutshell--was really beautiful. There were lots of coffee shops and art markets and rice fields and temples and monkeys. (Good grief, the monkeys... they were ill-tempered little critters and quite bold about digging through your stuff in hopes of finding anything remotely food-related.) Anyway, for further, less boring information regarding my trip to Indonesia, check out my pictures on Facebook, as a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

In other news, I became a Mac owner a couple of weeks ago! Since my previous laptop died nearly seven months ago, I had been agonizing over what kind of computer to purchase next.

It was the age-old debate: PC vs. Mac, and I'm happy to announce that after many sleepless, decision-making-nights, Mac won. Of course, I'm still learning how to use it, but while I've been working out all the kinks, I've been having some fun with a few of the applications (namely Photo Booth).

One more update: I'm apparently staying in Korea six months longer than originally planned. Oh happy day.... In exchange for an apartment in Busan, I agreed to stay on at my current school until March, 2010. In retrospect, it may have been an impulsive decision, but I'll be moving back to Busan next month, so there's no backing out now! (I have a feeling I may be kicking myself for this come September, when I was originally intending to go back home.)

And with that, I'm finished with Blogger for--oh--about three more months.