Hey all!

Since the start of this year my activity on vizzed decreased quite a bit, however I have not forgotten about this forum. For the people that have been wondering where I disappeared to in other words no one. I thought I'd take a moment to check in on the site and share a bit of what's been going on in my life recently.

It started with me graduating 12th grade, ending on a particularly strong note with me getting an A in 9 of my 10 subjects during my final year, something I feel quite proud about. On the flip side, I was also called in due to a few of my teachers having complained about me having an "attitude problem", resulting in me holding a speech during graduation as a way to try and make amends. Really I suppose you can't win them all

Through a year of saving up and some help, I completed a long time goal of mine by travelling to Japan with my brother and taking LOTS of pictures. I will try to share some at the end of this post if I can get it to work. The trip was made all the more special after having studied the language for 2 years and getting to apply some of my knowledge, though it lead me to a somewhat bitter realization that I'm still a huge noob at the language.

After getting back from the trip I have finally started to make good on a long time promise I've made to live a more active life style and become more independent. Besides going outside more and socializing, I've started working out again and have even been getting involved politically by joining the youth organization for the social democratic party. I'm currently taking part in a campaign to combat crime on the local level. Whether I'll be able to keep up my activity remains to be seen as I start my job again later this week, but regardless I'm happy to have been taking advantage of the free time I've had recently. I've also been accepted into my university of choice and will be starting my studies in Economics/Political Science and Japanese in september.

Some Japan Pics 

There you have a relatively short summary of my last couple of months. I hope everyone here on vizzed is doing well, I noticed that the site has become a bit more active recently which is always nice to see. Hopefully I will be able to contribute a little bit myself with my sporadic bursts of acitivity.

Well, crap, I spent the past five years thinking you were a year or two older than me lmao

Glad you had a nice time in Japan, and it's great to see you're doing well independently. Hope to see you around~

Glad to see you're not around here because life is busy and progressing forward.

The speech seems like "we want you to hold it but we know your answer will be nope". After all, the speech must be given by one of the top students, and looks like you were tricked into holding it. I do know that some (if not most) of the teachers and trainers I've had in my studies would be fully capable of doing that, and while our countries are very different, I still think your teachers were capable of that too.

Not sure why you didn't socialize much before, but I am sure that giving that speech has surely allowed you to let something out of your chest. I'm currently undergoing shock therapy two courses in which I need to talk in public, and I can feel how it's making my shyness vanish bit by bit. Maybe that could also be part of your teachers' plan, though I still favor the option above

I hope to see you around a bit more often. This is being a month of returns, and while yours may not be permanent, I'm sure you won't be the last one to give out updates.

Nice to hear an update on what you have been doing as of late.

Man, I'm jealous that you went to Japan (I always wanted to go to Japan someday), but it is nice to hear that you had quite an amazing time in Japan.

Also, yeah, the site has been increasing in activity a little bit more than like 6 months ago, although I only been back for like 3 months, but I heard before my return, it was extremely dead. Hope we get a whole lot more people making comebacks, it's always nice to see more and more returns, and more activity on Vizzed, and if this returning trend keeps going, soon, we will have the same activity we had like 4 years ago.

EX Palen : Nah, it was my own decision to hold it. But I am kind of salty about it, since 3 people in our class received a scholarship, and I am almost certain I was in the top 2-3 people in my class with my grade point average, they were just better liked by a lot of the teachers. Doesn't matter that much really since it wasn't a huge sum, just more the principle of it.

IgorBird122 : Having been there now, I can say that it was worth the wait. It's just an amazing country with so much stuff to do and see. If/when you get the chance to go there you should take it. I think the activity boost is in large part due to it being summer time, but hopefully it will last going into fall when school starts up again.

tornadocam : Thanks! That sounds cool, it's pretty rare to come across Japanese people where I live, it's mostly other South East Asian people (Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese etc). The only one I had talked to face to face was my Japanese teacher, so it was kind of shocking in a way to suddenly almost exclusively see Japanese people with only the occasional tourist sprinkled in.