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2016 – Janeil Harricharan

2016

Author’s Note: This article was written two weeks after this event took place in mid-December of 2016. After my situation in 2017, it got lost and neglected. When I restarted content earlier this year, a chain of events had taken place with the venue the previous season (2017), and I highly debated even posting my experience due to those events. Nevertheless, I’ll share as you can always count on me to. This is about my trip to the con at the time, not the drama and incidents that happened afterwards. It’s neither biased or reflects what I currently think of the venue.

I’ve done minor edits on this article to bring it current (specifically its ending), but it remains virtually unchanged from its 2016 version.

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It’s been about seven years since I went to an anime convention of any sort. Animazement 2009 being my last stint of cosplay, hanging out at a convention and going to someplace of that sort with “friends”. It’s not something I really care to talk about, always telling myself that I’ll go one day and I’ll have the right people around me.

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So when my aunt came to visit this holiday season, she whipped up some pepper pot for my mom. Sadly they didn’t have lamb for it (that was used on curry instead), so she used a chunk of goat meat in its creation.

 

Apparently you let this stew in a crock pot overnight to cook. I have to get the specifics again on how to create. But you add pepper and spice stuff to it, hence the name.

 

This was my first exposure to the dish, and the first time I ate goat. It actually wasn’t too bad; this one wasn’t tender and very chewy. Otherwise, it typically goes with bread and you use it to suck up the gravy.

 

It was a welcome change to get to eat a more genuine Guyanese dish.

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I know this may not seem like much, but I decided to follow long-lost advice from an online denizen and put a soft-boiled egg in my ramen for “extra protein”. I suppose I was just stressed with the stuff with the house going on, and decided to try something new.

 

But back in my pre-ETSU days, this person who I’ll just refer to as Jade (because I honestly don’t remember her online handle anymore), recommended that I “Dump egg in your ramen for extra protein! XD.” I thought it was a silly idea for all this time, but while I’m not of the mind to dump in the egg while boiling, I suppose I can try it this way.

 

It really didn’t taste bad, and I think I’ll be doing this a lot more often. Maybe I’ll get adventurous and start dumping more ingredients, too.

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This is the first time I’ve ever had a Jeep’s temperature senor tell me it was below freezing. And not even 30 or such. A freaking 26! I believe I was able to one-up a friend’s friend on Facebook with this photo, who was complaining later how “45 was too cold”. Ha. The New Jersey side of me laughs at you.

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When I started to help my Dad on the house today, I found this perfectly intact praying mantis out next to the wall studs. All complete, killed by the cold. We had frost last night and below freezing temperatures, so I immediately concluded it was the culprit.

 

This was a big mantis; for comparison to size, the wood it’s on is 4 inches across. When I had to ditch it, it did have a bit of weight to it.

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In 2007 I was coming to the realization that I was barely making headway with friends and social life at college. Everyone was so country, dating someone or people old enough to be your parents. I wasn’t part of the “I graduated from Morristown High School” group, the ghetto click or “redneck romeo”. I was really standalone, slowly discovering that there were more sociable people online than the people in front of me.

In February or March of that year I had started getting into contact with one of my cousins. He, his brother and another cousin were all attending East Tennessee State University, or ETSU. I hadn’t talked to them much earlier, but was beginning to learn that this mystical college was well within reach. All I had known that it was a big school and was more like a “university”.

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This is yet another book that should’ve been read in a month, but with my style, stared at it for six months then decided to read it one night when I was not in the middle of an Overwatch or Supreme Commander match.

I’ve always been a fan of Lemony Snicket’s work; I was familiar with a few of his A Series of Unfortunate Events books while growing up, though I hadn’t kept tabs on him after I turned 16. While browsing the bargain shelf in the young adult section in Books-A-Million during May, I ran across this book. At $4, who was I to argue?

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