Valkyrist

[Valkyrist]

Jobs
74 Thf
68 Pld
60 Whm
55 Drg
44 Rdm
40 Rng

Crafts
39 Cooking
31 Cloth

Personality (Real Life):
I'm the quiet type that sits back in the corner nursing a beer at a party. Not necessarily shy, just introverted. I have a large distrust for other people, so I try not to get involved as much as possible. At the same time, I can't stand being by myself. The irony does not escape me. A hopeless romantic. I torture myself with sappy romance manga and movies (which I always end up crying at some point or another). A complete scatter-brained artist (this explains why I can't stick to a single job in FFXI for very long). Always walking around with my head in the clouds. I tend to be very passionate with my emotions these days, I guess making up for lost time in my youth. I've been told I'm an excellent listener, and I find people often come to me when something's wrong, or they need advice, or just some comforting words.

Quick Life History:
My dad was a missionary, so I traveled in and out of the country a lot as a kid. California, Cayman Islands, Pennsylvania, and others. It had two profound effects on me: 1)I wasn't able to make friends easily, because I'd move and leave them behind. This hurt more and more as I grew up, to the point where I just stopped making friends completely. 2)I matured a lot faster than other kids my age. I've always found it easier to talk and relate to adults than my "peers".

The whole moving thing went on for most of my life, only stopping in my junior year of highschool. I graduated with my Honors Diploma. I actually turned down two full scholarships to law schools, so that I could return to Pittsburgh to persue a career in art. I attended The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and graduated with an associates in Computer Animation. The original intent was to go into the game industry, but I got out of that very quickly. I dabbled in movie special effects for awhile, but that didn't last long. Currently I've been working for Architecture and Design firms, making 3D models/scenes of buildings or retail spaces. Oddly enough, it's pretty fun.

Recently, I've decided to persue my dream of teaching English in Japan. I tried to join the Army to be trained as a translator, but they wouldn't accept me due to being color-blind (apparently I can be a professional artist, but not a translator...). So "Plan B" is to save up enough money to take night classes, and get a second degree in Japanese. I'm hoping to start taking classes sometime this year.

***

That's it for now. I'll add more/change it up when I'm not so sleepy.

[Kaizoku]

oO;; hey valky you kinda sound like me >_>; at least in terms of jobs >_>; i always wanted to do architecture ; ; but i'm not all that artistic ><;; and was also thinking bout learning a lot of japanese and then teaching in japan as an english teacher XD

you're color blind ;;? /shocked /amazed
do you have grey eyes Oo;? cause lots of color blind people have awesome grey eyes (i like eye colors cause since i'm asian i only get brown -_-)

[Tifrece]

"only get brown eye's"

well i only get green. what's your point? ;D

[Escorial]

fear me and my gray eyes! *cackle*

no... they're pretty dead looking kai <.<;
sorta boring imo

[Kaizoku]

all asians get brown eyes ; ; alllll aaaaaaallll ALLLLLLLL!!!!
>_>; if i met an asian with natural blue eyes i think i'd tackle them. ;D
grey eyes change colors though <_<; sometimes they're bluish, and sometimes they're greenish >_>; /amazed

; ; sorry i like eyes. windows to the sould and whatnot >_>;

[Valkyrist]

No grey eyes kai-chan, sorry. My eyes do change color depending on the season. The center Iris is always a dark red-brown. The outside Iris changes from Grey-Green in the winter, to some kinda reddish color in the summer. I'm not really sure (since I can't tell myself, that's just what others have told me).

I see some colors, just not all. And it's not like Red-Green or Blue-Green... It's like all colors. The few doctors I've talked to say it's really rare the way I have it, lucky me lol. Best way I can describe it?

Say I hold a image of a spectrum of colors up to you. Starting from Red to Orange. Your eyes could distinguish 500 different shades of red and orange in that spectrum. Mine could see maybe 50. Basicly the effect is I can tell general colors, but they all bleed into each other. I just have to be aware of this in many things that most ppl take for granted. I have to be very carefull about the color of my cloths, thus I only buy earth-tone shirts, and stick to bluejeans (because those two always go together no matter what). But even then, I thought my favorite shirt was brown-tan, but was told much later that it was an olive green.

I also have to keep it secret from all my jobs, which is really tough sometimes. Since I work digitally, I semi-memorized the digital color spectrum (RGB values are 0 to 255 each). But when I go to meetings with clients, I have to kinda wing it, or blame by mistakes on the lighting in the room ^^;;. Then I go home with the sample they gave me, scan it, and look up the color values in photoshop.

But I don't feel bad about it. I've always been colorblind, so what I see is what I've always had. It's not like I lost anything. Only time it gets to me is when people like the army recruiters or some of my old teachers would tell me "You can't do this because you're colorblind." I actually got into a yelling match b/w me and a teacher in highschool in the principle's office because he refused to let me join an after-school painting club.

All I gotta say is: I've proven I can overcome it. And I worked damn hard at it too. I spent hours and hours memorizing how to mix paints according to formulas (like 3parts White, 2parts Burnt Umber, etc) and how to read digital colors by numbers. I think the biggest victory was my Color Theory class in college. I was the only one in my class to get 100% on the final (we had to paint a color-wheel and label it properly), and was the only student since the class was created to get a perfect score for the entire quarter.

Oh and Kai-chan:
Don't be jealous of non-brown eyes. Asians get the beautifuly shiny black hair =P

[Kaizoku]

lol that too ; ; we only get black hair... actually <_<; my hair has black, brown, red, blonde, and white >_>; i have rogue hairs that grow wrong colors XD

and wow that's awesome Oo; the whole scan and check the colors thing genius

as for that teacher... he's an idiot. how are you gonna prevent a student from joining an afterschool club?? <_<; descrimination