After I came back from Semiformal Committee back to my car I saw that my car's mirror got fucking scratched. Damn hippies who were smoking, there van was too close to the line so they must have just gone and hit it when they left. Arrr I feel a Darth Vader 'NOOOOOOOO' coming on.

Then I went to go see Saving Face with Sonny, Ryan, Allen, Brian, and Juliana. It was a good movie and all both the females looked pretty good looking. Too bad they're lesbians... or are they?

As I was leaving the parking lot I was slowly backing out to make sure I wasn't going to hit anyone. I saw that an SUV was approaching so I slowed down to see if the SUV would drive by or let me out. However there was a lady walking in the parking lot so the SUV had to stop. Upon seeing that I decided to pull out completely.

Haha that's when the lady in the SUV honked at me. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't as though I was going to back into her SUV or anything. She was just mad because she had to wait for me to straighten out after pulling out of my space. She got so mad that she drove her SUV really really close to my car. Don't you love that? That people get so angry that they have to do something "threatening" like moving her SUV really close to my car. As though this fucking yuppie of a woman would risk her current lifestyle to show some Yellow Man who was right. "I'll kill him with my car, that'll show him." Please. I was confused because I couldn't tell if she actually thought doing something like that would make me move my car out of her way faster. So I just kind of waited there wondering what she was doing. Eventually I did straighten myself out and curl around her behemoth of a car and sped off. She yelled something when our windows crossed paths but I refuse to listen to idiots like that.

Then I come home to my apartment and I have to smell my stupid roommate's stupid dumplings that he defrosted.

Stacy, Chun, Adrienne


Stacy thought it would be a good idea if Stitch were in the picture instead of Chun


Chun, Adrienne


Sandra (wo)mans the cash register


"Where is the bouncer? We have unwanted guests"


Sam/Eileen/Stacy's hand


Do I look gangster enough?


James and his Irish Car Bomb.


Xinlei and I. We're never in a picture together!


"Wahh who is this guy?"


Caroline and I. I think I'm already gone by this point.


Matt points.


?


Allen Ho and I


Eden and I




So apparently in my drunkeness I took four pictures with Linda. Here is the best one that came out


Meng Fei and I


Another drunken pic I don't really recall taking


Sandra is aroused


Me and Stacy


Guess the two girls


Okay this is actually the better pic of me and Linda.


Brian loves his cash register


I am in reverse drunkeness


Ray and Meng Fei


Lesbians and Michelle (Possible Lesbian?)


This is nothing new




I call this the drunk Shuan taking pictures of drunk Victor series


Girls


Me and Philip


If you know anything about Canon cameras...

I've got a bunch of pics and even when I filtered out for the good stuff there were still a lot of pictures. Eventually I'll figure out how I want to sort all the files but right now I don't feel like giving out the pictures to everyone because we know how well that went with pics from NY. If you're in a pic then I'll send you that picture but otherwise I'm probably going to say no. Anyways, here are the initial pictures.

Last Dance Practice in Huntington

Group Picture


Andrew flipping Jessica


Victor, Andrew, and Wade doing a random part of our dance in synch.


Linda


Sandra


Eva


Chun doing a back flip or a front flip or hell if I know. What I do know is that Chun makes it look way too easy.


Linda and Eva


Adrienne and Michelle


Girls in their aborigini costumes




The girl's conga line


Jen is being pampered


Jessica


Smile like you mean it


The twins Ali and Julie



Oh no what has Andrew done?


Mace + Groin = Pain

Last night after I fell asleep from writing that lame elmo post I had another zombie dream, but not like my previous ones.

So this time it's night time (obviously, because daylight zombies don't exist), and I'm at this beach but behind me is a huge forest and some huge cliffs. Then for some reason a zombie dog pops out at me with what appears to be a tennis ball (could have been human flesh or something but how do you recall that?)

All right so a zombie dog wants me to play fetch with it. Seeing how my natural reaction is to run away, I eventually decide on the throw and flee route in which I "throw" the ball and "flee" the scene while the dog is preoccupied.

Now I'm hiding somewhere in the cliff area looking over this huge forest and my friend is down by the camp fire at the beach where the dog somehow ends up and I hear the dog say, "Where is he where did that guy go I'm going to kill him" and obviously his eyes are glowing furiously red from his anger. So I non-chalantly step out from my hiding place and say, "Here I am, do you have the ball?" Which prompts the question why I am talking to a dog albeit a talking one and why hasn't this zombie dog killed me and my friend and wait what am I going to do now.

Then I wake up because hey I don't have a dog. The end.

I was briefly talking to Bryan when he mentioned he was at work, at Google and had food. So I drove down there to go eat while we chatted about various things and how he and I both lived in New Jersey. After I ate everything in sight of me we went and drove over to Best Buy and Old Navy where I went to go buy Viewtiful Joe 2 and Bryan went to go return his shirts that he didn't like. As I waived goodbye to Bryan the thought passed through my mind that this was the first time I actually hung out with someone from CA without it feeling like it was either 1) some CA event or 2) some unofficial event that I was only invited to because I just happened to be in the room and nobody knows what the fuck.

Evaluating my time at CA, I don't know anyone at all. I'm just a mere acquaintance to everyone there. A perpetual wallflower for three years running. Half the time while I'm there I feel like I'm not even there. I'm too old of a member where everyone knows who I am so they don't really feel the need to talk to me that often. It kinda sucks but I understand the situation, they have to keep their member count and to be honest I'm just dead weight to them since I won't be coming back next year. There's nothing to gain investing in me.

Sam. Sam's my roommate but is that all? Would we even talk if not for that fact? I mean we both basically put our blind faith 2 years ago that we both wouldn't be horrible roommates to each other so at least we have that, right?

Then someone not even remembering that I went to NYC. I guess I shouldn't be really mad at that but when you feel totally invisible it sucks that you get a confirmation of that fact. Yeah I know you came in on a different flight and you were with your own group the whole time but yeah it still blows being forgotten.

And Chris, the organizer of the trip. I don't understand why I was even invited but I'm glad he invited me.

And then there's just various other members in CA who have been nice to me but let's be honest here, we don't hang out and the only time we see each other is for CA. Is that how it is with other members? I'm pretty sure it's just me. Off the top of my head of people from CA that I hang out with:

Yeah short list. In fact I really only hear things from Sam. Sam says, "Hey someone is having a party" or "Hey someone's birthday dinner is tonight." I'm always the last to know. Usually I don't mind because I know how it is planning something and not remembering to invite people and knowing people feel awkard being at an event that they weren't personally invited to attend, but let's be serious, my name is probably at the bottom of that list.

I don't even know where I'm getting at with this. I don't know what the fuck.

HOW THE HELL IS IT ALREADY 5AM

How do you become a TA if you don't know units of measurement?

Here is the question our TA gave us for one of our homeworks that was due last week.

A computer whose processes have 4096 pages in their address spaces keeps its page tables in memory. The overhead required for reading a word from the page table is 1 millisecond. To reduce this overhead, the computer has an associative memory, which holds 128 (virtual page, physical page frame) pairs, and can do a lookup in 550 nanoseconds. What hit rate is needed to reduce the mean overhead to 735 nanoseconds?

Now you don't have to understand the problem only know that our TAs correct solution is

550h + 1000 (1-h) = 735

Now looking at this answer and going back to the question you see where he gets his numbers. Oh okay, 550 nanoseconds oh and there's 735 nanoseconds OH! and here's 1000 nanoseconds. Wait WTF where did that 1000 come from? oh because apparently (10^-3) is ONE millisecond so apparently by some form of magic absolute rule it becomes 1000?

A nanosecond and a millisecond are 6 orders of magnitude away from each other (10^-9) and (10^-3) so assuming that everything else is correct the answer should be

550h + (10^6)(1-h) = 735

That way all the units are correct and then we can properly solve for h which makes h almost a 99.99% probability.

OH BUT OUR TA DOESNT HAVE TO FOLLOW THE RULES NO SIREE BOB LETS JUST PUT THAT 1000 IN THERE AND WE WILL MAKE IT WORK! OH AND BY THE WAY OUR TA ADDED 2 HOUR + 2 SECONDS TO OUR FINAL SO NOW WE HAVE 4 HOURS!

What's worse is students asked him about this in discussion and he assured them that it was the correct measurement and that everything was correct.

This is the third time he's done something like this to us. One time during class our Professor asked him if he had done some task regarding homework(?) and he said, "Oh yeah its uhh posted on the newsgroup" to which one student said, "No it isn't, I'm looking at the newsgroup right now *props up his laptop* and there is absolutely nothing from you" All he could say was, "Uhhh I'll have it posted later on?" Geez great, way to lie to us to cover your own hide.

FINAL NOTE TO TA: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MICRO AND MILLI.

Since Ami talks a lot about stupid/annoying people in her classes, here is my version of that.

As part of every single UCI student's requirement, Upper Division Writing is something that is usually pushed back until the very end of the student's stay here. For ICS Majors, we have a course on how to do technical writing. Actually there is pretty good money for technical writing as you have to have an understanding of computer concepts while also knowing how to write a good sentence or two.

Now the focus of this class is to write about a change you want to make for a 'system.' That system can be anything from a computer application to something someone in our class did, which was to eliminate the penny from circulation. One of the requirements everyone has to do for this class is give a PowerPoint presentation on your system.

For some reason or another, perhaps because the class I'm in is very small, there seems to be a lot of people who ask the dumbest questions or just create general stupidity that I just have to stare in amazement. “How does he do that? Is it the shoes? “

Example: There is one guy in our class who cannot shut up during a presentation, he is constantly whispering to his friend about something but instead of whispering he talks as though his friend is across the room from him. I know he is doing this because I can hear him from across the room when he talks to his friend. It's very rude to the person trying to give the presentation when you talk very loud while he/she tries to talk. They can't tell whether you're making fun of him/her or whether you're making some stupid comment about the slide that they're on. Either way you’re being an asshole. Hey asshole shut the hell up and let the person finish their presentation okay? Oh yeah during another person’s presentation where he had a pie chart with percentages, this same person had the bright idea about asking, "Why are the percentages on your slide over 100%? I do not understand why it is 101%" HELLO jackass have you never heard of rounding? It occurs when you try to round decimal percentages. I think it's something I learned about in grade school, I would use “you” but obviously this concept is so very foreign to you.

Then I had to go up there to give my presentation. I got a really weird question about what programming language my application was made in. What the hell does that have to do with anything related to this class? Who cares about “programming language”. I don't give a shit and neither should he. For some reason or another I answered his question mainly because I was caught off-guard by it. I mean who asks something so random and unnecessary. If I had more time to think of a response I would have told him to shut the hell up and quit wasting my time and the professor's. That's one of the problems that these stupid question askers cause, it always causes us to lose time for people who want to present.

One of the presenters during this past week was a complete game geek. I love playing games and I guess I would consider myself a “gamer”. But when I same complete game geek I mean that in every sense of the stereotype that that title instills. Way to keep up the stereotype of a person that plays and enjoys games. Not only did this guy talk about a game (Asheron's Call) as his system, he spends fucking 3 minutes describing stupid shit about polygon size and how the texture color was only at 24bits and should be converted to 32bits. Basically a lot of bullshit no one in our class cares about and no other gamers would care about because this game came out literally 6 years ago. 6 GODDAMN YEARS AGO.

Fine whatever, talk about your stupid game during this presentation and ask whether or not the class can see that stupid "line" that no one can actually see. But stop wasting my time, the professor’s time, and the rest of the class’ time. It was literally the end of our class time and one presenter still needed to go but then someone raised his hand for a question.

OH CHRIST it's the same fucking guy who asked me a question. This time his brilliant question was, "What is your development time, how big is the team you expect to have and what is your budget?" What kind of question is that? I can't even comprehend how any of this is even loosely relevant to our class. Who cares how big his budget is. He doesn't have one; he's not really going to implement those stupid changes that he wanted. What the hell is wrong with you asshole? Quit stealing time from my life.

Now when this question was asked our Professor tried to "nicely" tell them that it was a lame question and that maybe it would be better suited after class is over. The presenter actually had the fucking balls to actually try and answer that idiot's question even after our professor told him to answer it AFTER class.

This probably prompted the most fantastic thing I've ever seen a professor do, which is clap over the student presenter's attempted response back to the idiotic question asker. That made my quarter.

This is nothing but a test post for my test Xanga

I popped my pinky finger today while practicing for CA Culture Night. Nothing serious it just hurts when I type and use my pinky finger to hit the keyboard.

After eating at that nasty A&W place that made me feel deftly ill, I had to go get some gas for my car only to have to pull up to the one ARCO within 50 miles that wouldn't accept a credit card at the pump. Right after we finished filling up gas from the ARCO the guy behind the counter runs out to turn off the lights. Apparently they were preparing to close or something.

Friday night I decided to go to Jack In The Box to get some food for dinner and on my way back I got pulled over by a cop for not having my lights on and missing a stop sign. Then he just let me go with a
warning so I don't know if I was lucky or if it wasn't time to issue tickets or if he was cutting me some slack but here I am without a ticket.

Thursday night I played with Erik at the Coffeehouse thing CA was hosting. Lots of great performers at the Pre Show. Everyone sounded nothing short of awesome and I'm glad I decided to participate.

That being said, talk about being nervous. Waiting for our turn to go up I was sweating bullets and constantly pacing around. I hadn't played in a performance since last year when we got jacked at the CV Talent Show. Only after about half way through the first song was I able to calm down and just start playing. Luckily I didn't do anything majorly stupid and I didn't mix around the verses like had done in practice. All in all it turned out well for us. I thought this would be the last show for what our group has called, The Team but now I am excited about future possibilities. :)

Also I'd like to say a big thanks to TL, Toni-Lynne, for driving down all the way from LA just to catch our show . Talk about being an awesome friend to go through all the trouble of driving down from LA
all for little ol Erik and Shuan.

Setlist: Josie, Fake Plastic Trees, Say It Ain't So. Undone (Jay-Z Intro)

Album:
Taken by Toni-Lynne

More pictures





Nostalgia Factor:

Chris' Lunar New Year Party was last night

I saw Steve and Dave Grotts at Albertsons on Saturday when I went with Le to buy some alcohol. Kimsun and one of his friends, Emily came and tagged along since we were all a bit too early to the party.

At the party I was made to take a shot because Le forgot Trinh(?)'s name. So somehow that made me liable for party foul by friend relation. Either way I just took the shot because how can you refuse alcohol?

From there things escalated. Chris made me a drink and then I think James also made me one although I might have just imagined that. Kevin made me 2 or 3 shots as well but the stuff he made was pretty light.

And then when I went back for more to drink no one was there to mix me a drink so I made my own drink. I put in some kind of banana flavored rum(?) and some melon alcohol and then put some pepsi on top of it. It tasted pretty good I wonder if Pepsi will ever come out with Banana Pepsi because that's what it tasted like.

The rest of the night was fun. Just going around randomly and hanging out with people. Being outside was nice because it was cool but apparently the Cha people could hear us across the street?

---

Le let me crash at his place since I had driven over there. I had to wake up early to head back home because I was going with my family to some Chinese New Year Festival in Pasadena.

First though, we stopped off at this place that sold these beautiful pieces of pottery from somewhere in China (forgot the name) where all they do is make pottery.

Here is an example of some of the pots.



For some reason there was some sort of "Military Museum" next to this place but it turns out it was just some random guy who kept a lot of old military junk and charging $4 to see it all. There was a tank and battleship AA gun. I couldn't tell what kind of tank it was so it may just be some fake but my sister and I took pictures in front of it anyways.



Here is the AA gun.



More stuff inside the store.



Haha and then I saw the greatest thing as I was about to leave


So when we got there I guess we got on the butt end of the parade because everyone was stopping and getting off their float.
The girl on the very top of the float is Miss Los Angeles China Town 2005. I didn't catch her name though


This is one of the bands. Santa Ana Winds Youth Band. They have a Bass Clarinetist


Here's me in front of the dragon that was at the end of the parade.

Erik and I will be performing at the Coffeehouse SSPA 1100 at UCI this Thursday. Not that anyone who reads this can make it because no one is really near UCI anyways. But yeah, that's it. We don't know how many songs we're going to play because that's still up for discussion.

Patriots win Superbowl XXXIX over the Eagles 24-21, lots of food and people. Way more food than people though.

Lesson learned from the Superbowl? No matter how good you are (Donovan McNabb), someone will eventually fall down when you need them the most (Eagle's return man on the Patriot's last punt basically costing them 6 yards and probably the game)

Went Bowling at Anaheim Concourse which was 5 minutes away from my house. Bowled really shitty games and then my thumb started hurting at the end.

Super Bowl Tomorrow

Erik says I should update. So here it is.

I am going to get so fucking wasted tonight because I goddamn deserve it.

Check and check.

My boss sent me an email today telling me not to come to work but I didn't read it until I got to work but then they ended up locking the gate and now I'm stuck here because my key to the gate doesn't work.

TRAPPED IN COSTA MESA. SEND HELP!

So I guess there's nothing to do but update both of my blogs.

I went to Fullerton on Tuesday because some old high school friends wanted to eat at Waco's Tacos, which turned out to actually be Rockin Tacos, for dinner. We didn't stay long enough to be in any of the pictures that they take every night. Afterwards we went to a Starbucks and just chatted until midnight. It just made me realize how much I need to get out of the state of California, no matter how much I love it, just so I can experience new things. All their talk about iBanking and what not flew right over my head. I also realized that ever since they left Troy, a lot of the girls have been getting their freak on. Haha.

Around 12 the Starbucks closed so I had to get back to Irvine. I lived about 10 minutes away from the Starbucks and I actually got off the freeway to go home but I decided against it thinking, "The rain doesn't seem too bad, I'll just chance it."



This was probably the worst driving experience I've encountered. Not being able to see 5 feet in front of you, having water move your car around like it was a small pebble, and having lights on your dashboard turn on that I've never seen in the two years I've driven the car. All very scary, I thought I was going to bite the big one and die right there. I mean of all places to die I don't really want to die on the 55 Freeway. Driving onto the 73 was just as bad though, right when I got off the connector from the 55 to the 73 I literally had to stop my car because there was zero visibility. I eventually made it back but I had to drive on the left side of Bison into CV because the right side was so flooded.

Update: 1/2: On Wednesday I went to the ARC with Julie and Ali and met up wtih Roo, Le, and Both Davids. Since it was the twin's birthday we decided to go out to eat to celebrate by going to Kabuki's in Cerritos. We were gonna go to Guppys afterwards but the twins needed to go back to UCI so maybe another time for that.

Thursday: Hung out with more Troy people again. We went to go eat at the Pho place near AMC 20 and then we went to Jack In The Box so I could get my fry fix. Then we met up with John Carroll at Tea Zone and then I went home

Friday: New Years at Mark's. Michelle rotates the wrong way to pop open the streamers, Silly String Fight and No Dennys this time.

Year In Pictures 2004

I'll have other updates later.

In the spirit of wanting something right now and not later, I bought The Killer's CD, "Hot Fuss" at Target today and am now enjoying it.

I also bought Sam Reservoir Dogs and Fight Club for his birthday. Sam also got drunk off 3/4 pints of beer and then threw it all up about an hour after we got home.

Me: Hey Finals, bring it.
Finals: I brought it
Me:

I went to Chris' Halloween Party on Saturday. Thanks to Brian Prado for driving me and then driving me back later on. I got really drunk but I remembered almost everything that happened at the party. Having to help setup, drinking a couple of mix drinks made by Kat, yelling "Go Spongebob, Go Spongebob, Go Spongebob" because someone wore a Spongebob costume. Then for some reason I kept telling Meng Fei to make out with Jenny and then Chun and Andrew were screwing around as drunk Cyclops. Yeah I remember lots about the party, I even remember coming back and helping some underclassmen that had too much to drink. I even remember Sam, Meng Fei, David, and Le coming out of Sam's car to eat some food they got. But for some reason I don't remember any shit right after I came back to my apartment and finished eating. Apparently Brian IM'd me and all I said was, "eh what?" and then I assume I went to sleep.

Then the next morning I find out that I also IM'd someone else... whooops!

It's about eight right now.
I want to be eight.

Note: I'm glad I saw this for free because I don't think I would have been very happen at paying money for this movie. Not that it was shit, but it was just "meh" for me.

It's making me depressed

Haha now I won't have to goto Xanga.com anymore!!!

Xanga's are bad because you're getting to know that person through what they post on their Xanga and totally takes away the human aspect of socializing and interacting. Also from experience posting here on my own site, people think they know enough about you from just reading their blog/Xanga. In short. Xanga = Bad...


* Goes back to reading Xangas

Edit: Goes to The Facebook instead

UCI started on Friday which meant that Summer has officialy ended. For Dinner on Thursday I went with Erik and Steve to Pat and Oscar's. We reminisced about the good ol dorm days... which weren't really that good 'ol for me except for a couple of great moments. After we ate I went with Sam to go watch Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence. God what a beautiful movie but tries way too much "trying to be smart and quote philosophers" and not enough action sequences. But very visually stunning and a decent flick.

Friday. All my classes went okay, I'm dropping 183 Graphics Programming because the professor is crazy. She wants the class to complete 4 programs, 4 written assignments, a written final and project final. On top of that she wants us to learn OpenGL on our own time. Since I don't really need that class to graduate I'm just going to drop it.

Friday was also Staceys birthday party at the Old Spaghetti Factory. There were lots of people there and I'm surprised that they actually managed to fit everyone in.

Saturday. Went to Don's house to watch the USC vs. Stanford game. Stanford was winning at half time and Don, the only person who went to USC out of Pranav, him and I, almost gave up all hope of USC winning. But they ended up stopping Stanford's offense in the 2nd half and they won the game. So afterwards we chided Don for not having more faith in his own school. I guess it's easy being so calm since UCI's football team is undefeated and all but Don had nothing to worry about. Later that night we played Poker with a 1 dollar buy in. I thought I played well until I played a big hand not realizing I didn't have a straight when I thought I did. So next time I'll win for sure...

Well that's it. Tomorrow's Monday and the official "First Week" of class. I guess we'll see what happens.

and then you die.

I'm heading down to Irvine tomorrow to move into my apartment since Ken's leaving and its closer to work for me.

Who's in Irvine and want's to hangout?

I had this long thing about my locker from High School except I accidently closed the window.

Let me just say, my locker was my locker. From my four years there no one else used that locker but me. So when I closed that locker for the last time my Senior year I wondered, which Freshmen is going to inherit my locker next year? Will that Freshmen think and wonder about it's previous owner? Probably not. Just like me, the thought of it never really came up until it was pointless because the locker wasn't mine to call mine anymore. So now that it's been another four years. That locker is going to get a new owner within a year and maybe the current owner will be thinking, "who had this locker before me?" But probably not.

So why am I reminiscing about a stupid locker or is this some stupid metaphor or maybe its just because its me writing at 4:30 AM in the morning now even though I started this at 4 only to have to write it again fifteen minutes later.

I guess it's just like 4 years ago all over again. I'm heading into my 4th and final year at UCI, I feel like I've accomplished nothing and I'll probably end up feeling nostalgic about some other stupid inanimate object. I just hope it starts out like my senior year of HS but doesn't end like it did.

Night.

Went to Graduation Ceremonies at UCI. Saw Ken graduate but then went to Jack's but he didn't end up walking... Afterwards I drove the other Shaun to Ken's dinner thing. Thanks to Ken's family for treating us to a huge dinner.

Here are two pics. The first one is Ken with Jen O(?) right before they went up to get called. The second one is Ken and I after the ceremonies.

When I watched GATTACA for the first time when I was a freshmen in high school I had no real idea what the movie was about. But when I came out of the theater it became one of my favorite films.

However I totally forgot about it until Ken mentioned it in his speech during Semiformal. If you haven't seen the movie go see it right now because I promise that you won't be disappointed. The actual quote from the movie goes during the swim scene goes.

Anton: How are you doing this Vincent? How have you done any of this?

Vincent: Now is your chance to find out.

Both brothers continue to swim with Anton, the genetically superior of the two brothers begins to fall behind. Anton stops swimming, looks around and starts to panic.

Anton: Where's the shore? We're too far out. We have to go back!

Vincent: Too late for that. We're closer to the other side.

Anton: What other side? How far do you want to go? Do you want to drown us both? How are we going to get back?

Vincent (smiling): You wanted to know how I did it. That's how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back

That to me, is what made the movie and is two fold in its meaning. Even though Anton is genetically better than Vincent he can't risk drowing and pushing his limits too far. Vincent has nothing to lose so he was the one who was willing to go to his limits. Two, like Ken said, give it your all and never leave anything for the return trip.

CA Semi Formal was last night. I didn't win for webmaster but I still had a blast.



Linda and her date Van: Van is the brother of one of my oldest friends Don. Van, Don, Linda and I all went to Troy in Fullerton, CA.
She was in Co-ed Dance with me for CA and I will miss her hitting me or stepping on my foot during practices.



Me, Sam, Linda, Ken, Victor



Me and Tiffany: Tiffany is so easy to tease. Maybe 'cause she's such a tease? Haha just kidding.



Me and Caroline: Such a flirt. But what a nice flirt she is!
Too many people already overuse singing that infamous Outkast song about her (or at least just named after her). She's not the reason for the word witch, I don't think anyone wants her to crash, crash, craaaashhhh into a ditch. But the song did get something right, 'all the guys would say she's mighty fine.'



Me and Casey: The other Culture Night Chair. This girl worked her butt off just so we could have a nice show. She went to all the dance rehersals, opened her house for us to party and trash and on top of that she's a fellow ICS major! Go ICS!


Me and Adrienne (x3):
Picture 1: Head cut off
Picture 2: Head cut off
Picture 3: Knees cut off
Bad photographer? I'm too tall? You choose.



Me and Phil: I met Phil at Ski Trip. I talked to him because I had no other choice, he slept in the same room as I did. Haha.



Me and Patricia: Dance Dance Co-Ed Partner. Why does she keep kicking me? Oh it's part of the dance? Right, okay, but we're not doing the dance?



Me and Jack: The "Old Guy" on CA. To me he was just another guy in CA. So very nice, drunk or otherwise. He always made sure things went right and it's going to suck not seeing him next year.



Me and Kat: Next year's CA President.



Me and Sam: Next year's IVP and my current and next year apartment mate. Man you think guys think his hearing is bad? Try having to deal with that every night and then having to deal with him hocking up loogies. Haha just kidding Sam (I'm not kidding about the hearing and loogies though).



Me and Teak: Let me just say that without Teak I would not be in CA at all. If anyone epitomizes what CA is all about, it would be Teak. Nice, funny, outgoing and willing to talk to anyone. I'm glad he was able to show up for a few of the CA meetings this year.


Me and Victor: I don't get why people say this guy eats a lot. I mean when we were freshmen all he would ever do for dinner is eat ONE SERVING of food from Pippin and then leave. Granted Pippin's doesn't have the most ideal food but still. One plate man? That is so weak Victor! But seriously this guy's pretty cool when he isn't being so mean.

Another year of college and CA is over. Just one more year for me.

Here are some pictures of stuff Culture Night related
The Girls practicing their dance + People watching movies + People painting backdrops

CA Meeting and then dinner at Islands (Day before CN)


Dinner at TGIFs plus After Party minus incriminating pictures.

Last night, after months of hard work CA's Culture Night finally came and went. I was pretty stressed about going on stage that I almost forgot the dance steps right before we went on. I had to ask Alby which way was right. But when it was actually time to go I got it all together and did the parts. No one was dropped, no one really slipped (well except for Ken at the beginning) But all in all I think we did well.

Congrats to Caroline and Casey for putting on the show. To the Skit Performers, Martial Artists, Dance Crews, Backstagers, Pre Show people and all those who came out to see it. Thanks everyone for their hardwork at making this Culture Night a great one!

Last Saturday: Went to Chinese something... Chinese Garden(?) and ate their Dimsum.




Left to Right: Melissa, Kevin, Annie, Jill, Yang Laoshi, Me, Frank.

Last Thursday, May 13th
To start off let me just say that although I messed up I don't think I was messing up that badly. Anyways we ended up coming in dead last.

Now I'm pretty bummed by this mainly because of a couple of things. First off they only had two microphones, one of which was barely on. Second, they had one extension cord that didn't go very far so all our amps were on the far left side. Three, because said amps were so far away I could barely reach the microphone when I did the Oooohs for Undone because of fear of breaking the pick guard for my bass. And lastly the person who won was part of the student CV staff which seemed a little suspicious. She did a dance that went along to "The Reason" by Hoobastank. While it wasn't "bad" it wasn't better than the belly dancer that was on earlier. I don't know why bands always get snubbed during these talent shows. I mean dancing is pretty hard but practicing and playing instruments isn't exactly the easiest or cheapest thing in the world to do. Hell we should have just played "The Reason" and drawn a really strong audience crowd but that song is very easy to play on bass and I would imagine that its pretty easy on guitar since the whole song is three chords (while typing that I put down 'thords' instead so I think I'll call songs that are only three chords). But to be fair we did play Undone, which is a thord song. But Undone actually requires effort by the whole band and you can actually throw in some variation in that song.

Speaking of which, after we got over our placement in the show I was just glad we totally nailed Undone. Freshmen year we played in the Middle Earth talent show and just stunk it up. Josh was just learning to play with a pick and apparently his B-string wanted to go flat that night. I was just barely learning bass and my D-String went flat as well. Just so many problems that occured during that performance. So we decided to play Undone again so we can say that we could nail that song. And I think we redeemed ourselves from that terrible first year performance. I was able to actually put in some of the walking bass lines that I see Matt Sharp (former Weezer bassist) do on some of the old Weezer videos. If nothing else, it was just great being able to totally rock out that song like we should have done freshmen year.

Setlist:
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Soul to Squeeze
Weezer: Undone

CA/CADC are winning alot this year #1 CHF, #1 Fusion, #1 ALL-UC. Haha and LA finished third so none of the absurd arguing about judging points, etc

Pics later

Attendees: Peter, Michelle, Steve, Melody, Will, Yoong, Erik, Pranav, Me, Esther, Josh, Holly

Wednesday: Alkaline Trio concert
Friday: Dalai Lama speaks at the Bren Events center with guest 5 minute speaker Sharon Stone
Saturday: Wayzgoose Washout :(

Yeah.

Finals suck, Spring Break Rocks

Also fuck you George Lucas for this abomination of dialogue

PADMÉ
...We used to lie on the sand and let the sun dry us... and try to guess the names of the birds singing.

ANAKIN
I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything's soft... and smooth...

OH I GET IT ANAKIN, ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY PADME'S SKIN IS SOFT, UNLIKE SAND?

I am surviving Finals.




Barely.

Clubbin'

Last Thursday was Guys Night Out Night at Hooters + some pool hall.

Rewind to last Friday where I went to go see the premiere of Red Trousers over at the Independent Edwards near UCI. There was a taiko drums and a Wushu performance. Robin Shou (AKA LIU KANG) showed up briefly to introduce them but apparently left right after everyone went into the theater. Also on hand was Hakim Alston and Keith Cooke (SUBZERO). Keith was the only one who actually stayed after the first showing.

The movie itself was okay, the part about the stuntmen was awesome because you see them take these crazy tumbles and then get right back up again (well except for that one guy). They also had some small movie in it called Lost In Time which was some cut/cancelled project from 3 years ago. It made no sense and kinda detracted from the overall experience. But it was still enjoyable just for the stuntment part.

Sunday after practice the group went to Hooters 'cause Sam won this VIP All-You-Can-Eat Chicken Wing deal. So the 10 lucky people (actually 11) went to go eat. We ended up polishing off 230+ chicken wings/legs during which we pondered whether or not they had to kill about 50 chicken or whether they grew chicken that had 4 wings and 4 legs. Haha man soo full from that. I think I actually gained weight because of that dinner.

Last Friday (Feb 27th), Erik, Jeff, Gerald, John Paul and Maya played in the ASUCI talent show as Dash Rend Band. While they played superbly, they sadly did not get any prize money. There were lots of really good acts and a big crowd came to watch. For some reason there was a boat-load of Troy people there for one reason or another. From my count (other than Troy alumni on stage), there was Katherine, Pranav, Josh and myself (who already goto UCI), then there was also Michelle, Sam Brumley, Nathalie and OF COURSE ESTHER! NO ONE WOULD FORGET ESTHER! Very odd indeed. I have no pictures from the show but I did get their performance plus CADC's performance on tape, so hopefully I can get that transferred into a digital format.

The following day was CHF which is where all the UC Chinese clubs (from Santa Barbara on down) + USC's Chinese club get together to have fun and watch the dance groups perform. Lots of cute girls there and the performances were great. Good job to the board for putting it together. I have my pictures up here and the CAUCI website also has tons more pics (800+ from what Victor told me).

And right now I just got back from watching 21 Grams staring Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. It was a good movie although it was hard to follow at the beginning because it kept jumping around back and forth through different times in the movie. There was this one annoying guy in the hall that kept laughing at scenes that were funny at all or kept saying, "Oh shit" randomly. He left pretty quick after the movie ended so I'm guessing he just wanted to be a jackass and to get attention.

CA Thursday After Event was happy time for me. I promised David I would "show" him how to work his new camera. And when I say "show" I mean, "Hey this looks like the button I use for my camera."

David forgot his camera at his apartment in CV so when the meeting ended Le's friend was nice enough to drive us over. Only problem was we had 7 people to fit into a 5 person car. So we squish Le and Julie in the passenger seat and Philip, Me and David sat in the back with Jennifer lying on top of us. Haha it was great. I wish I got a picture of that but Jennifer was resting herself on my backpack.

The After Event was to go eat at Jack Shrimp near the Park Place Edwards. The place was nice looking and all but the food is mighty expensive. Luckily we only had to pay 50% of it. I ordered their Jack Shrimp special (which was 16.95). Basically large shrimp in this cajun sauce. I liked it but didn't think it's worth 17 bucks. 8-9 bucks maybe but not 17 bucks.

I also had to prepare a speech for Chinese today about co-habitation. If this is me reading this in the future. Friday (yesterday) was the day where you somewhat redeemed yourself. Self-congratulations are in order.

Lastly, I have to stop being so sad about stupid girls. I mean I don't even know why I crush on girls. On one hand my mind goes, "You must get a girlfriend" and the other half goes "Hey man, be , don't worry about them girls" (My thoughts aren't filled with emoticons or improper grammar, and I also doubt my mind is split in half like that). I generally feel that I don't really want a girlfriend but just needing to have someone to be with. It's about a week until Valentine's Day. Who knows what will happen within a week but I know that I won't force myself into looking stupid and getting into a relationship if I don't feel comfortable with it, no matter how cute the girl is. Although girls with a nice Chinese accent is quite the sexy.

I'm listening to Schoolhouse Rock right now, "The Shot Heard Around The World," and now "I'm Just A Bill" is coming up. Awesome

Apparently I come off an unhuggable and only deemed worthy of "virtual hugs"

I haven't updated much since New Years, in fact I wrote very little for New Years.

To summarize:

I spent my New Years' Eve afternoon trying to help setup Anu's wireless Internet connection mainly because I wanted to know how to setup a wireless network. I spent most of that time trying to get through all the clutter that their family had accumulated on their computers (spyware, unneeded software). When I finally finished with that and had the Wireless Network set up, the laptop I was using to test it refused to talk to the access point.

By this time it was pretty late so I left Anu's and I ate with Esther, Erik, "Josie", and Helen. Now there were others there too, some I have not seen at all since graduation and some I have never seen before even though they were all from Troy. Now of course there was Liz, who I actually got to see in person for the first time in a while, Kelly Anderson, who forgot who I was even though I managed to remember hers *shrug*, and Adam Weiner, who completely ignored me. So yeah basically it was kind of weird. Nothing bad, just different.

Before the dinner, Tejas had invited us to his house for New Years. Let me just say his house was one of the largest I've been in. I mean we drove into this small little inlay street which led to this huge dip and the front of his house looked pretty nice but hid the size of his house. Hell there was a sauna in there! Anyways, we played XBox until the countdown, then went back to playing more games and then most of us went back to Anu's house because she had offered to make us pancakes. So we drive over there, which consisted of me getting lost because not only did Tejas have a large house, he had a large house in the hills that requires you to memorize 20 street directions.... AT NIGHT! So even though I exited from the 91 to get to his house, I somehow end up on the 55 (near the 91) to leave his block.

We get to Anu's house and there's more people I haven't seen in a while but I'm too focused on the wireless network. I spend about half and hour trying to work on it and talking to Akash over the phone and what ends up happening? I don't know, the goddamn thing just started working. I don't really know what solved the problem but I guess calling Akash worked....

I'm out of time so I'll finish this up on Monday or so.

It's been more than a week since I headed to UCI to go on the CA Ski Trip. I packed up my stuff on Saturday and headed out to UCI at night. After a brief stop at CV to get some final things. I dragged all that crap down to the Social Science Parking Lot then to the Student Center Parking Lot when I realized that no one was at SSPL. Once there I met up with Ed. We were the first ones there, none of the officers were there yet.

Eventually people started arriving one by one, we manage to assign everyone to a car and fit all the bags into the back of the vans and head off at around 12:45 AM Sunday.

Sunday: We drove from about 12:45AM until about 12:00PM Sunday. During this time I only did 2 things. Sleep, and wake up to use the bathroom during the rest stops. At around 8AM we got to the base of the mountain. We ate breakfast at a McDonalds and also heard the news that Saddam Hussein was captured, in a hole no less. At 12 we made our way to the rental place for the people who needed skiing/snowboarding gear. Then after that we ate at Marie Calendar's. There is something wrong with this Marie Calendar. First the manager totally ignored our table. Sam and I ate with two others (can't seem to recall which two) and the manager waited on CA people who came much later than us and basically any attempt to get service was ignored. Eventually one of the waitresses took pity on us and took our order. Oh yeah and Hot Chocolate at Marie Calendar's in Lake Tahoe cost $2.50.

We eat and then we get the bill. Since we were such a big group, they split us into smaller groupings of 4 to 6. But apparently since there were 55 of us, separated, they decided to add in this ridiculous gratuity to our fee. Even though they split us apart because they couldn't handle so many people, they still charged us for having to serve said large group. Think about that for a minute. Restaurants usually charge you money for having to serve a large group of people with one waiter. But not only were there multiple waiters waiting on us, we weren't even a large group for the waiters to manage. Each of them probably only had to take care of two tables. Anyways, we paid our bill but we left a smaller tip mainly because a $15 dollar gratuity fee split among 4 people is pretty goddamn expensive.

We finally make it into our cabin at around 3 and everyone settles in to find a place to sleep. Luckily I was able to take the bed in one of the rooms and slept on it for the rest of the trip.

Speaking of the room I was sleeping in. It was THE ROOM TO BE IN! Every night there were always people chatting it up and more people coming in and out of there. Everyone wanted to be in the cool room!

Well okay some people came in because the room was the only place to get one bar of reception on their cell phones. People were on the bed moving their cellphones left to right like one of those scanners from Ghostbusters trying to get the coveted two bars of reception. But still it was a cool place to hang out.

Monday: This was the main skiing/snowboarding day. Everyone went to Heavenly to go have a good time. Being out there at like 9-10AM in the morning reminded me of why I hate the cold. It's cold. Even with several layers of clothing it was still cold. I only bought big thick gloves that were too big to grip anything small. I didn't bother to buy smaller gloves that I could use to help me keep warm so the whole day my hand would go numb everytime I took off my gloves.

Snowboarding in general was fun, but tough. Even the beginner's mountain was hard for me. It's not the fact that I couldn't stand up. Standing up and going down the hill fast was no problem. Learning how to turn and slow down was a different matter. For the life of me I could not "carve" my snowboard well enough to slow down. I would either carve too hard and fall on my ass or I would have to purposely fall to stop my snowboard. For some reason I thought it would be wise to go to the next easiest slope and I ended up staying there for half an hour snowboarding and falling in succession.

Well you know the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me." Well for some reason I was convinced by the other people there that I had not gone on the right course and that in fact I went on a more difficult course. So back up I went to that slope only to realize that the one I took was in fact the 2nd easiest slope and that I would have to go down it again. Luckily there were other people with me this time and we kept each other company while we tried to get down the mountain. One of our partners ran into one of the signs while we were starting and ran her snowboard into a tree right at the end. Good times. Good times.

Well at night when we got back to the cabin... Let's just say things got a little wild. Not much of the action was recorded by me but let's just say a few people on the trip have perfect blackmail material :)

Tuesday: A group of people went snowboarding again while another group went to Downtown Lake Tahoe to just look at some of the shops. Nothing much went on there except I won myself a harmonica only to realize later that it only plays 4 notes. At night we went to Reno where we ate at a buffet and then went to their "Win stuffed animals" Game Place. I played Ski Ball for an hour with little success, destroying the notion that I was king of ski ball. I still won a monkey though, so that was pretty cool.


Wednesday: Not much happened here, just a lot of chilling and relaxing. I woke up at like 9:15 because people had left earlier to go snowboarding again. I don't think anyone else woke up until noon. We got a lot of snow time though. Someone bought disc shaped sleds and we rode down this hill that was next to the house. And then later on in the night some of us went out and had a small snowball fight.

Thursday: Everyone packs to goto San Francisco. $30 Parking!!! A group of us went to Fisherman's Wharf where we saw the Bush Man. Haha, that was awesome. Paul didn't believe there was such a thing but there he was with his bushes.

We headed towards this World Famou Ghirardelli's where we ordered their Earthquake 8-Scoop Sundae. We totally annihilated that shit.



Ended up going back to eat with the rest of the group at Lichee Garden. They gave us a ton of food which we couldn't finish, which was sad 'cause we had a ton of guys at our table.

To wrap it up, we started driving back at around 10:30, we got back to Irvine at around 5 or so and then I found myself back home after a fantastic week.

Miscellaneous:
If it smells like Icy Hot in your room, someone must have slept on top of an open Icy Hot tube and spread it all over your sleeping bag.

Someone clogged up one of the toilets with what can only be described as dried apple sauce.

It is funny when you see someone in San Fran. turn their wheels the wrong way on a sloped hill. It is funnier when someone sticks a "How to park your car on a sloped hill" scrap from the San Fran guide on their windshield wiper.

Ski Ball at the Circus Circus is rigged, I swear to god.

A certain person decided to punch someone because said person wanted to get some sleep while others wanted to watch Minority Report. Either he really wanted to get some sleep or he was determined to not watch another Tom Cruise movie in the same night.

Here is me with a picture of Mt. Doom, aka the Heavenly slope to the top.

Finals are finished. I'll be gone next week but I hope to see everyone later on next week. Until then for those of you with finals... Good Luck! Enjoy the vacation.

You're funding terrorism.

School: I had three tests last week for each of my classes. I also signed up for my classes next quarter... looks like I'll be taking three ICS classes.

Movies: I saw Gothika on Friday, starring Halle Berry. Let me just say that going into this movie my expectations were very low. The critics panned it as being stupid and I thought it looked dumb from the trailers. Well I'm not sure if its completely stupid. If completely stupid means that the movie scared the shit out of me, then yes it did. I mean, maybe it's me but I'm just not use to the whole 'freaky looking little girls popping out of no where to beat the shit out of someone,' theme to movies, but yeah... It was scary and loud and no boobies from Halle Berry this time.

* not really

Chinese Association: Let's see. Flag Football. I've been playing flag football all quarter for CA. It was certainly a fun experience although it would have been better if we won more games.

Two Thursdays ago (11/13) CA went Broomballing. Broomballing was pretty fun and this time I didn't fall at all. I scored a goal off someone's shot so all in all it was pretty cool. We ate at Island's beforehand and CA was generating so much noise that the manager threatened to kick us out. So we loitered outside instead for a good half an hour before heading over the the rink. While we were waiting for everyone else to arrive, we watched these two amateur hockey teams go at each other. When we first got there the score was a respectable 2-0. But by the time the game was over the score was something along the line of 8-1.

Then last Tuesday we had Cultural Night Dance Practice... I was very sore after that and it lasted well until this past Friday.

This past Thursday was Bowling. I bowled a hundred something first game and was on my way to a decent game of 130 or so when they shut down our lane But oh wells.

And finally Saturday was Beach Cleanup at Seal Beach...

I have three "quizes/midterms" this week in all my classes. Also I have to choose new classes for this quarter. It looks like I'll end up taking 3 ICS classes, if I can get all the ones I want. I'm also probably going to extend my Chinese classes but for pass/no pass.

Last minute decision. Went to the Century Club in LA. Had fun. Now tired. G'night.

I had to give a oral presentation for Chinese on Thursday and me being quite the procrastinator decided to do it late night Wednesday. I was nervous about doing this presentation mainly because I had to go first. Pretty funny story about that. The order was chosen at random by picking a number from a bag. I was probably the third person to choose and I mixed up those slips of paper pretty well. I said aloud, "I hope I don't go first" and wouldn't you know it... I grab a slip and it revealed itself to be #1. Goddamn.

When it was finally time to do the speech I got up there and went through my speech. And while I wouldn't say I did a great job (hardly any eye contact with the audience and I didn't use enough 'sentence patterns'), I say it went pretty well for the most part. After seeing all the speeches from Thursday and today (Friday), you can easily tell who wants to be in Chinese to learn something and who's in Chinese because they have to be. I suppose I am a little disappointed because some of them shouldn't be on this track of Chinese, which is for people who understand and speak fluent Chinese. Some people were saying a lot of things in English that could have easily been looked up on the a Chinese Dictionary website.

So how does that end up with me going to the Century Club? Well after I made my speech I was basically done for the whole day with no real assignments due the next day. I knew that CA was going to the Century Club but I didn't have a ticket. Looking at all the people dressed up at the meeting was what broke it for me. I found someone who knew someone else with a spare ticket so after the meeting was done I rushed over to the Middle Earth dorms and then rushed back to my apartment to get dressed as fast as I could. I think all in all the total time to do this was 20 minutes.

After an hour drive to LA and to find parking (which turned out to be $15). We stood outside the club for about 15 minutes and I chitchatted with some of some CA members who I never had met before.

Anyways before this gets way too long. The place looked awesome, the dance floor got too crowded, their smoke machines blasted the fuck out of one spot on the whole dance floor, the DJ was pretty good and somehow managed to sneak in the same songs but with different mixes on them, girls were dancing in a half-cage and kissing (two groups of two girls made out with each other although I missed the first two girls) and other craziness.

Briefly describe the asymptotic notation, given n elements which are in a randomized order with distinct numbers. Assuming you are given O(1) extra space, how much does the midterm you are taking right now suck ass? Answer with a number and briefly justify your answer.

Answer: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Midterms coming up, which means I'll be posting here more often throughout the week... haha.

CA had flag football on Monday. We won by a touchdown mainly because the other team couldn't run very fast. They were pretty well organized though because their quarterback had like one of those wristbands that has all the plays so he could call them out. Also we should have scored another touchdown but the referee called so many penalties for us not lining up correctly on the line.

Afterwards Sam and I went to the ARC to workout and lift weights (same thing?). Let me just say, that after one whole day, I am still sore as hell. I can barely lift my arms up.

So Chinese Association had a "car rally" on Thursday. A car rally was basically a scavenger hunt on a car. It was spread out all over Irvine. We were given clues on an envelope and had to guess where the next place was. The first one was at Jamba Juice and then we went to other various places. Starbucks, Blockbuster, uhh Fat Burger, Trader Joes, McDonalds. We had to do these small tasks at every stop. Like at the Blockbuster we had to figure out three recent releases and at the Trader Joes we had to leap frog over our other teammates. I think Fat Burger is a pretty cool place. Since I'm in CA we get a 15% discount on meals so Erik and I went to eat there today before watching Kill Bill which was a really cool movie and I'll talk about in the next post. Lucy Liu is pretty cool so here's her biography that I took from IMDB. "Born to Chinese immigrants in Queens, New York, Lucy Liu has always tried to balance an interest in her cultural heritage with a desire to move beyond a strictly Asian-American experience. Once relegated to "ethnic" parts, the energetic actress is finally earning her stripes as an across-the-board leading lady. Liu first appeared on the big screen as an ex-girlfriend in Jerry Maguire (1996) (she had previously filmed a scene in the indie Bang (1995), but it was shelved for two years). She then waded through a series of supporting parts in small films before landing her big break on "Ally McBeal" (1997). Liu initially auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter, which went to Portia de Rossi, but writer-producer David E. Kelley was so impressed with her spunk that he promised to write a part for her in an upcoming episode. The part turned out to be that of growling, ill-tempered lawyer Ling Woo, which Liu filled with such aplomb that she was signed on as a regular cast member." I knew a guy named Bill once but I really didn't want to kill him. By the way I put whip cream on my nipples. Did you know that Trader Joes doesn't really have a guy named Joe that trades? Erik and I just finished watching SNL and they had Cruz Bustamante on. Did I even spell that right? I don't know, maybe I'll go look it up.

So that's about it, nothing much happened. I am just here at 1:30 AM typing up this post. Well more like finishing it up. I opened this window at like noon Saturday and just now have I finally gotten to it. I like how WinXP can just stay on and on for days without requiring me to reboot every 10 hours like Win98 did. All right I'm gonna get some sleep. Cya guys later!

More and more recaps because I don't bother writing it down when it happens.

Thursday: First CA Meeting and Bonfire. I ate one hotdog and several marshmellows. I tried making someone a hotdog and ended up using three of them because two of the slipped into the pit.

Friday: I went up to LA with Erik as soon as my classes ended. We went to go see School of Rock, which my sister had gotten free tickets to see at the Paramount Studio. We hung out with Esther and Helen for a while. Helen was down here because her mom wanted her to get something, which I forget now. When we finished up the movie, we drove back to Esther's apartment and then drove to Denny's. Let it be known that Denny's is not good for my stomach, at least the 3 egg omlettes made my stomach queasy.

While we were driving back to Esther's I called Sherry to see if she was at her apartment but her voice mail picked up. During our stay at Denny's we called her up again and she actually picked it up. Turns out she was at work and had just gotten back. So as soon as we finished eating at Denny's we drove over to her place. She lived in an apartment complex that was close to the frat row at UCLA. When we got there it seemed like 20 parties were going on at the same time. We finally located a small and probably illegal parking space and went to see Sherry. We hung out for a while before deciding to head back before a cop ticketed Erik's car.

Saturday: Pranav, Don, Andrew and I drove around Orange County in a somewhat orderly fashion.

The third year of UCI has begun. And to say the least it was very anti-climatic. I had Art History 42A at 11, and it was boring as all the other classes in the series were. I just hope I pull through with a decent grade, but I can't help but fall asleep in their classes. The room has nearly all its lights turned off for the slides and the professor just drones on and on about the subject as though it was about cheese. They don't even slow it down so you can write what they are saying.

The next class I had was Chinese. Interesting class, lots of cuties but they're all asian so I can see why I'm attracted to some of them. But it doesn't really matter 'cause even if I get anywhere with one of them I'll still screw it completely up. One girl that I was partnered with forgot her Chinese over the summer so I guess I am glad for those tutoring sessions to help me practice.

That's it. Later on I went home because my grandparents are in town. I went to go see, Lost in Translation starring Bill Murray. Let's just say if you're looking for major funnay, this movie is not for you. It was okay, but very much drawn out and with lots of unnecessary parts. Lots of the humor seems to stem from the fact that, "HEY ITS JAPANESE, AND LOOK THEY DO EVERYTHING DIFFERENT SO IT IS FUNNY TO US AMERICAS."

Yeah I really don't know what to make of the movie... I guess it was good?

I moved into my new Irvine apartment late Friday night to avoid the bumrush of freshmen who would come on the weekend. So I was well settled in by the time the wave of people came.

Friday night I didn't do much, just setup my computer and move around some of the stuff in my room so that we could get everything organized. Our subletters over the summer were horrible people... well, maybe not that bad but still not very good tenants. They left a mess and didn't pay me my last month's rent. At least he left his (old) TV here so I can watch football games on Sunday.

Saturday night Jeanette invited me to some kind of dinner thing that her mom setup in Irvine. I wasn't sure what kind of dinner it was but it was free food! Little did I know when I got there that it was something for her mom's buddhist temple. Haha I was scared about these things because I never feel comfortable attending these functions which are religious in nature. Still it was okay because it wasn't like anyone was harassing me about why I wasn't a buddhist.

Afterwards we went back to Jeanette's apartment to hang out a bit before going to Shawn's party. A whole bunch of CA members came by to go with us to the party.

When we got there there were only a small crowd of people playing cards in the corner and a few others scattered about. The only person I knew was Kat from CA. There were also three guys who were from Shawn's last party but I couldn't remember their names. As the party progressed I got more and more social :) but I was sad 'cause almost everyone from CA had left after maybe an hour at the party. But it was cool cause like I said, there were cool people there :) Fay came by later as well! Haha that girl is awesome (possum).

The next day (Sunday), I had lunch with Jeanette, Fay and Allan at this Greek restaurant. The food was okay but nothing spectacular. Maybe I just didn't like the food but the meat tasted funny. I guess that's what you get when you eat meat that they make by rotating it around a pole heightwise. Later on when I got back Donny IM'd me for an unscheduled trip to LA to visit our friend Esther's apartment. So Donny, Erik and I headed up there to join up with her and Kenny. We hung out for a bit and Esther made us some pasta and ice cream. What a great host! :)

After a stop at In'n'out, we were suppose to hang out Geoff Parker but he bailed on his to be with his lady, Lady Liquor that is. Instead we met up with Robin and Damien Demian from high school. Robin was still as cool as ever. I never knew her that well in high school other than the fact we had Benner Junior year, still she has treated me as some friend that she has known for years ever since we've graduated. Maybe it's just that she's so nice, either way it's all good. Had a nice talk with her and Esther about school.

I think I am extending this too long so I will try to summarize Monday.

Erik came to CV. Ate Carls Jr. Went to Josh's apartment. Jammed. Went to AV. Visited Jeff. Visited Kenny's room. His Roommate suggested we goto eat at Pat and Oscar's. Goto Pat and Oscar's. Eat good food. HATE THE FACT THAT THEIR BATHROOM TILES REFLECT SO MUCH. Went to watch Old School on the lower lawn. Went back to my apartment.

Today is Tuesday.

Edit: For those reading below, I do not hate Radiohead. I think I'm gay for them right now. They play such sad songs (Exit Music, True Love Waits), rock songs (Electioneering, Myxomatosis) and even songs that are 3 songs in one (Paranoid Android) Oh yeah and also a slew of radio hits (High and Low, Creep, Karma Police, Paranoid Android, Optimistic, There There). I use to have a copy of the Kid A CD in my car Senior year of high school and that was almost all I blasted for most of the year. I loved that album (although disliked Amnesiac).

Gay for Radiohead.

So yesterday was the last day of ICS 171 sans finals. There was this project due as well at midnight so I had to pull an all-labber in the ICS labs. Well I didn't finish because this thing, I managed to complete the 2nd part but not the first. So I went home at around 10 to just get the hell out of there and turn the project in. All I have left to do is study for the final on Tuesday.

Also, I missed the NFL season because of this project. But eh, Washington vs NY Jets... not exactly the most exciting of games but c'mon the first game of the season and I missed it :(

Edit: I forgot to mention a few things.

The glow from the lights in UCI give off this nostalgiac type of feel. When I look at them it reminds me of so many things that has happened the past two years. The one thing I associate them with most from Freshmen year was after leaving the ICS labs.

When I left the ICS lab on Thursday, it was dark outside, which reminded me of Freshmen year, 1st quarter where the whole ICS H22 class would be literally stuck in the ICS labs until 1:00 or so, whenever it was due. I also remember going to the Denny's a lot before it was shut down by Kerpal and his two types of chicken.

Sophmore year, most of my memories about the lights are walking down from Campus Village to go to the bridge to walk over to the University Center to get some boba at Cha. Ah, the classic Cha Run. Such good memories from Erik and I walking down to the bridge talking about various things.

So I guess the point of this was that I get so nostalgic about everything I see. I don't really enjoy things when they are currently happening. Not until some time has past and something I see triggers that memory do I miss those times.

When I went to eat sushi with Don, Jimmy, John Shin, Derek, Gary, and Victor. I drove to Don's house for the first time in a while. All I could think about were the parties we had in his house from the past two years. Looking at it now and then thinking back to when the place was full of people and how we totally trashed his house... haha just kidding Don...

So my second year here at UCI ended, I took my last final today at 8AM and went up to the wire trying to complete it. And now Donny just moved out and went home to attend his sister's graduation... at Troy

Has it really been two years since we've graduated? I still vividly remember the graduation practice and the first bonfire we had. Now two years later it seems as though time flies by so fast yet I feel like I haven't done too much in my college career. But then again I recall feeling somewhat incomplete at the end of my sophmore year at Troy. I think what will really count is what I do with my next two years at UCI. I think Junior/Senior year were the most fun I've had so I'm hoping for a repeat of that. Joining CA this year has me definitely looking forward to next year.

So much has happened this year, which I guess I will write about later on when I have nice long break to write about it. I will be busy until about Sunday or Monday so have fun everyone who is coming back this weekend. Everyone should give me a phone call or IM so we can plan something. We all must hang out sometime, yes?

I've got three finals this upcoming week so it'll be busy busy busy...

Jimmy and Victor came today so we went to eat. I showed them some of the hilarious/awesome videos I've collected over the past year at school. Pablo Francisco & The Family Guy bring back good times.

Later on Saxy Esther and Saxy Helen decided to come visit us which was pretty coal. We went to go eat at Carls. We wanted to goto the fancy one off Campus but it was closed so we went to the one with the smelly bathroom on Culver and Michelson then we came back and hung out for a couple of hours watching TV. Our sofa seats four.

Okay now I gotta prepare for finals. Good luck to everyone... well almost everyone

Last Friday I hung out with some good 'ol high school buddies. I went with Pranav and Maily to go play some pool. Since we had three people at the time we decided to play Cutthroat. But Pranav kept pulling a lot of his OMG BS HAX type shots so I kept losing at the very end. Then Victor, one of teh Berk Boys, decided to join us so we switched to Team 8-Ball. I think we lost one game by default and then another game we lost.

Afterwards we drove over to the Lollicup in Fullerton where we were going to meet up with James. I was fully expecting to meet more high school people because that place seems to beckon former THS alumni. But alas, no one familiar was there when we got there.

I ordered the standard boba with some fried chicken (popcorn-like). And then James showed up. I hadn't seen James in a while even though I've visited USC (and their apartment) a few times but he was hardly ever there because he was always "busy" with his frat . But yeah it was cool seeing him again. Still same 'ol James. Just crazier. If that's possible...

Here are some pictures...



Then Saturday was the CA Semi-Formal. I wasn't planning to go but I convinced myself to go and have fun even though I don't know too many people. I went to see all the interns who I know, and then Teak, Shaun, Albie and Kat, and then Jeanette and Carolyne. But past that I don't know too many people in CA. I guess that's partially my fault because I'm not usually very vocal among strangers. I guess it's something to work on next year in CA. It wasn't as though I didn't try meeting new people. I went to almost every single event CA held after I joined. I went to CHF, Culture Night, Karaoke, Unity (Club), and All-UC. But I guess the fact that I'm not very outgoing among people I don't know too well (to reiterate what I've already said above). Throughout the year there were a lot of times where it would seem like I knew everyone, then there were would be other times where it was like, "Who the hell is that guy?" Just really awkward situations.

The CA Board though were definitely great. Hell, none of them knew me when I joined and still most of them didn't even know me that well now but they still treated me like a friend. I guess you'll hear that a lot from people in CA and I would have to completely agree with them. They are some of the friendliest people I've met. Especially Teak and Shaun, they were the ones who always talked to me at the beginning of the meetings when I didn't know anyone at all. Also Kuo and his girlfriend Sue (is it Sue? I'm pretty sure it is, I hope I didn't screw that up), totally fed me when I was starving driving up to CHF. Hell the fact that they let me drive up with them was pretty cool.

And also Vic and Ed, my hallmates from last year. Without them, CA for me would not have been as fun. Also they drove me to stuff .

And also Sam, apartment mate for next year! The one who always seemed to show up with me to all the events that CA held.

And to everyone else who I met. You guys are all (I need to get a cool smiley)

Yeah, anyways, CA Semi-Formal. I'm glad I went. Both to see the old board leave and the new board get placed into power. And dancing was pretty fun albeit it was very hot (Cue Nelly plz thx).

And so anyways, here are the pictures.






The old board standing around while Kuo talks smack* about them.

*good stuff


Sam after he won for Social Chair


Justin "White Boy" winning for Historian


Albert, Sports Chair


Caroline(sp?) winning Culture Chair


Mike(?) for APSA rep


Ken and Kuo, new and old President of CA


Sam and Ed



Some shots of the room after the ceremony


Shawn, Shuan (Me), and Shaun


Me and Jeanette


Me and Sam


Teak and I


Me and Carolyne


Me and Kat

After the dance was over and I was starting up my car, the Jimmy Eat World CD I had in there started to play My Sundown. Talk about relating what I felt about the night into a song. What a coincidence that it came on when it did.

3:49 - Why am I still up? Oh yeah, My Chinese Test tomorrow (today).
4:00 - Still no progress.
4:07 - Wow, I feel terrible.
4:17 - This definitely sucks.
4:21 - Screw this I want to sleep

So I'm suppose to write this essay about rituals. Here is points we have to make in the essay

• Describe the sculpture based on your observations/notes.
• Define the term “ritual” based on Suzanne Blier’s essay.
• Speculate on the ritual past of this sculpture in some temple in Japan, based on Roger Goepper’s essay.
• Consider ways in which the past rituals of this sculpture have been replaced by new rituals. Is this assignment a ritual too?

So yeah here I am trying to write it and it's due tomorrow. It's not as though I got lazy and waited till the last minute. It was more of like, what am I suppose to write for this essay. Seriously I'm uncertain what the point of the essay is about. Ritual yes. But uhh... What 'bout it?

Here's a ritual. The one where I constantly stay up late to finish ambiguous assignments.

Background: I took Math 6A and the Calculus series at Troy.

It is the policy of UCI's ICS Deptartment here that you must tell them to "clear" you from ICS classes if you have taken a course that is in the prerequisite for that class outside of UCI. For example, a ICS class I have to take requires that you take the Calculus series in order to be accepted into the class. Now the problem is, you must do this for every single class that has a calculus requirement. People cannot just clear their calculus in one fell swoop. No, they make the students come back over and over again every quarter so they can get their classes cleared for the same GOD DAMN REQUIREMENT. Apparently even though our ICS class is ranked in the top 10 in nation among public school computer program, they maintain a 20+ year old database that has absolutely no flexibility. Because apparently we have to keep going through them to clear classes, yet if they attempt to use computers to automate this task, it would create 3 times the workload for them(???) So bottom line, there is no way to have my records show that, indeed I took calculus 3 years ago for every single ICS class. I must tell them to do it manually.

And how did we learn this lesson?

I knew already that the pre reqs were required to be cleared beforehand but I had wanted to know if I could do it in one sitting and keep myself from having to go there every quarter. So this morning I go over to the ICS Student Affairs office to ask them, "Hey is there anyway to clear my pre-requisites all at once?" Now I guess this is the moment is where if I had ignored the advice, I would have been better off. This part here is very important. The girl at the front desk, who I later found out that her first day on the job was... today, told me, "Oh, you're probably have to go talk with the Math Office and talk to them about clearing your 6A and calculus series." Okay no problem, just goto their offices, easy right?

Later on in the day, Erik, Pranav and I head over to the Math Office to get them cleared so at least we won't have to keep going back. We go into their offices and we explain the situation and they look as us kind of dumbfounded and said, "You need to go to the Physical Sciences office"

*SIGH*

Okay, so apparently the Math Office has absolutely no control nor access to any of our records at all. The Physical Sciences (albeit the Math Department is listed under them) are the ones who control the Math Department's records. Why the hell is there a Math Office if they can do nothing?

So off we go to the Physical Sciences Office to get it cleared. Now the lady here was really snotty or bitchy or whatever you want to call it because when we tell her that we're from ICS she gives us this look like, "ICS? Why are you here in the Physical Sciences Office?" (Imagine snotty cheerleader voice) And we explain the situation to her about how we've been going around in circles trying to figure out an answer to our question. She responds, "Well the ICS department sets the prerequisites for that class, Idon't see why you are coming here to the Physical Sciences Office to get them cleared." (Queue snotty voice again) "Thats the problem, we want our Math classes cleared," Us three say in vain, knowing that this isn't going to turn out very well. "Well let me call the ICS office and see what is going on." She says again in her condescending tone. "Uh hello yes, I have three ICS students here and obviously someone must have told them wrong because now they are in my office... yadda yadda yadda" She gets off the phone, tells us to go BACK to ICS and sign a pre-req clearance form.

At this point I'm about to break.

So we head back to the ICS office. I assumed that there really was this magical form that would clear us automatically from every single class, but alas, the clearance form she had told us about was the same goddamn sheet that I had signed earlier in the morning. Goddammit. All that fucking time for nothing.

At this point is when I learn how the girl at the front desk had screwed me over. Usually, when you work the front desk, you do not have to act as though you know everything. I won't think any lesser of you if you say, "I don't know, let me get someone who does." But apparently the girl thought she could answer it. Not only did she send me to the wrong office, she actually made me believe that it was possible to get those classes cleared. This is such fucking bullshit. I am so pissed off at that girl right now.

A great song for them to have been playing as Erik, Pranav and I left their offices would be We Will Rock You by Queen.

Fucking Bureaucracy.

Thursday I woke up to go to Chinese at 8 again. This quarter has been real trying for me as I attempt to wake up at 7 every single day so that I can head down to Chinese and struggle through it for 50 minutes. ICS 151 was also uneventful. I kept falling asleep every so often. At 11, I went to meet one of my classmates in Chinese for a small group project I had to do on Friday. That did not go so well as we didn't understand exactly what to do and we only kept within the boundaries of what we thought we should have done. I felt that I could have done much better on it knowing what I know now about it. I seriously fucked it up in class and I feel sorry for my partner who had to endure me trying to say some easy lines in Chinese. I think I do pretty well on projects where my lines aren't scripted. I have difficulty doing straight memorization now so my attempt to read memorized lines turned out to suck major ass. If I had some way to adlib on stuff it would have gone on much better. I just feel really bad about my partner... I hope she didn't get a worser grade because of me.... Hell I know I didn't do so well.

So after finishing that I went to go grab a bite to eat and then met Donny to talk to his boss. Then I spent the two or three hours afterwards studying for my Bio midterm. Except I really didn't know what to study. That class is so vague as to what we specifically have to cover on the midterm. There's so much stuff that we go through that it's impossible to focus on what to study. You basically guess what could be on the test and hope you're right.

When I got back I played around with GTA3: Vice City. That game is so fucking tight. There is nothing like trying to get an ambulance to attempt a jump and having the game go in slow motion as it slowly ascends to its peak and then gradually comes crashing down. Then I watched the end of the Lakers/Spurs game. Indeed it was a sad sad moment. You could see Kobe trying to hold it all in but you know he was devastated about not winning. Oh well, the Lakers will win it next year assuming that they get some players during the offseason and I make a huge contribution to the Laker Fans Donating to Referee Club. Apparently we came up a hundred dollars short to force that game 7 .

So after watching them lose to the Spurs I walked down to the student center for some night market thing HKSA and ROCSA were holding with all proceeds going to help fight SARS back in China. I bought 5 dollars of tickets. I ate two pieces o' chicken, some tea, a rice ball. I also won a drink and a set of markers.

And then afterwards I went to the CA meeting and went to the Karaoke afterevent. They crammed 10 or so of us into a little room (Apparently the other room had way more people though so can't really complain). We sang various tunes, mostly English although some people sang some Chinese songs. Also I just saw a commercial by Apple promoting their online music store of music for 99 cents. The dude was singing "Baby Got Back" by Sir-Mix-A-Lot. I cringe and hoped I didn't act like that while I was singing it last night. Jessica didn't want to sing at all when I tried to get her to sing into the mic. So I ended up hitting her with a microphone ^_^..

Also Thursday was the Matrix premiere which I skipped to goto Karaoke. Hopefully I'll see it soon before too many spoilers arise.

Erik and I went to watch a sneak preview of The Italian Job.

Quick review: Okay movie with a great car scenes.

One thing I have to say is that although Edward Norton was in this movie, he was there only because of "contractual" obligations... but he is a terrific actor. He can play such a rat in one movie then play a hardcore neo-nazi in another. His role in this movie seemed similar to another character played in another movie ...

In what is a rare thing here in Irvine, Jurassic 5 rolled into town on Friday for the only concert sponsored by (AS)UCI. UCI does not like to provide for any concerts at all even though they have a bajillion dollars from all our student fees. Pfft, bleh.

So the opening act sucked. I don't know something about his screaming didn't do it for me. Kinda sounded like he trying to go an octave higher than he could. Also he screamed... over and over again... Basically every word he'd try to scream out multiple times in a sort of AC/DC. Brian Johnson fashion... only terrible.

Then Jurassic 5 came on! Contrary to popular belief, the band actually consisted of 6 core members (4 people rhyming and 2 DJs).

Let me clarify here, I was not a Jurassic 5 fan before hand nor do I claim to be. They just happened to be here on a free concert.. so, hey, free concert. I can't really explain it but I mean their performance was just amazing. The energy in there was great and they let the DJs have at it with some crazy ass shit. My arms were very sore (more on that later) so I tried as best as I could to cheer when everyone else was putting their arms in the air (and waving them like they just don't care...) while I tried my best to clap. They were great! I'm a big fan now.

On Thursday Night I went broomballing with Chinese Association. We drive up to Disney Ice, waited for the hockey teams to finish practice and then started playing at around 11. The concept of broomball is to make it into the goal of the other team. The thing is you have to do with while walking (falling?) on the ice with your shoes and using a stick with clam-shaped end.

There were a lot of people playing at the start of the game. It was comedy "Huge Glob of People Centered Around the Ball Wherever It Moved" option. It was so hard to move the ball around because so many people would be over the ball trying to take control with 5 other sticks trying to do the same.

Also the ball is very hard to hit/control. This is the reason why hockey sticks are shaped the way they are. So that they can scoop up a puck and control where it goes. In broomball it is a lot different. The stick has a clam-shaped end so you can't put very much power behind it (which I guess is to prevent people from getting hit too hard in the face). The stick also makes it hard for someone to dribble the ball down. Most of the time movement of the ball involved just dumping it against the boards and hoping no one on the other team would deflect the ball in the other direction.

Oh yeah and also since we have no skates, falling was a common site. Attempting to use your stick and trying to move on ice without skates is not an easy thing. If you're not careful and you try to hit the ball too hard you will most likely slip! I slipped a total of three or four times.

The first time happened because I tried to lunge for the ball while it whisked past me. That hop that I took caused me to lose balance and I hit the ice hard on my elbows and side.

Second time happened for what seemed to be no apparent reason at all. I'm standing at center ice watching the other team's attempt to score on our goal when all of I sudden, I try to move only to have my lead (no foot slip on the ice when I attempted to push forward. I try to rebalance myself but no luck. My stick goes flying and I land straight on my back.

The third time, relates to control of the ball. The ball had been passed to me (sort of) and I was attempting to make my way down... I try to dump the puck into the other end and I reach back and prepare to strike the ball as hard as I could. I do make contact but in doing so had lost balance and fell to the ice on my elbows.

So to make a long story longer I had a fun time playing broomball. I woke up Friday to the aching of my elbows. A direct result of going to the ARC on Wednesday and then broomballing. Oh and Jeanette is a hardcore broomball player who is out for blood when she plays. Also, she is a pirate. Iron Jessica Cash!!!!!!! ARRRRR!!!

Erik and Josh are doing hardcore nine one screams in the living room so I'm having a hard time concentrating or maybe that's just me not wanting to study for my Chinese test tomorrow. Or quiz as they like to call it. As though having 4 quizzes + a final throughout the quarter is less difficult than 4 tests + a final. Oh actually we have 6 of those quiz like tets. 4 tests throughout the quarter and for finals we have to do both a verbal and written test. Verbal is pretty easy, but a written test was 200 multiple choice questions. ARGH!

Okay this is going to be a longer post but you should read through all of it instead of scrolling down... really what else are you going to read?

We had our ICS 151 Midterm on Tuesday. For the Troy people, the class is basically a beefed up version of what we had for ICT. So a lot of concepts have been repeated in this class. Binary logic, K-Maps, yadda yadda. For the miderm, our Professor assured us that it was an easy test (uh-oh you know where this is going now right?) and even provided us with a sample midterm to show us a) how easy it was going to be b) how short it was going to be. Sure enough, the sample midterm was fairly simple and could have been finished easily in a hour and a half class. When we went to her office hours, she said that the sample midterm was pretty much what was going to be on the real midterm.

So going into the midterm I thought I knew what to expect on the test. And I'm taking this sample midterm and a tabulation problem to solve some Primary Implicants comes up. This kind of problem is very easy but takes a long time to do. There are two ways to solve for Primary Implicants. For humans the better way is to use K-Maps; for computers they are better off w/ the tabulation method because computer's can't really use K-Maps.

Anyyyways.... So this tabulation problem alone takes me 20 minutes or so because not only do we have to find Prime Implicants, we have to find the Minimal Coverage. This means basically doing a lot of multiplication of multi-variable factors ala (P1 + P2 + P3)(P1 + P3 + P4) etc, etc. And as I'm finishing this up I'm thinking, okay that took 20 minutes, you still have about an hour left. You're doing good, you're only a few problems away from finishing... and that's when I flipped the next 2 or three sheets of paper with problems that were AFTER that tabulation problem. WTF??

And during this whole time she's assuring us that we have plenty of time. Only at the very end did she realize that there was no way in hell we would finish all those problems in time. And by then all she could say was, "Try your best, there is partial credit"

Just to give you a general scope of what was _after_ that tabulation question. It was a lot of Adders/Subtractors and lots and lots of stuff where we expected that there would be one or two questions on. But instead we get about 5 of them and none of them we've ever seen or recognize how to do for certain.

And also, since I want this to be read in case you've started skipping... One of the problems was some weird question about a two-bit divisor. The gist of it was this. Draw out a truth table for a 4 input (16 rows of 0's and 1's) along with the 5 outputs. Oh yeah, by the way, DRAW OUT 5 K-MAPS FOR THE 5 OUTPUTS.

WTF?!

Okay, here is how my weekend went. Keep in mind I was supersick which hopefully will explain all the peculiarities below.

1. Pranav came to pick me up, we drove to USC to pick Don up but Don was handling his ticket and shit and then we realized we're in LA and that there was no way we could go back onto the freeway so we stayed until 7:30. Came back to Fullerton and ate at Flame Broiler then I went home.
2. Saturday morning I wake up and SURPRISE! Bloody nose.
3. Attempted to do long and winded ICS 151 "tutorial" homework.
4. Played Splinter Cell demo. That game is fun as hell even though it's all about sneaking around.
5. Tried to sleep, but my sister woke me up and told me we were going to Rowland to eat dinner with the folks.
6. Right before we're about to leave... SURPRISE! Bloody nose.
7. Ate at that Chinese Bistro place in Life Plaza. Their food was okay but I don't like their soups at all. Not very tasty.
8. Sunday morning I wake up. SURPRISE! Well... no bloody nose Sunday morning but I mean I'm glad there's finally some change in my life!
9. Went out with parents to go eat Dim Sum in Anaheim
10. Came back and watched the rest of the Lakers game.
11. Just as the game was ending. SURPRISE! Bloody nose.
12. Got my hair cut
13. Went to Jeremy's to practice for the CV Talent Show. That didn't last too long. I was really tired and or sick by that time.
14. Came back ate dinner and my sister took me back to Irvine
15. Attempted to study
16. Sick kicked in hardcore
17. Went to sleep at 11 with the intention of studying in the morning
18. Today I woke up... SURPRISE! Bloody nose.
19. Went to Chinese class. We had this worksheet where we watched a video and labelled whether the statement was true or false. In the first video it's these two kids and one of them is being nosy and fumbling through the other kid's photo album. What I thought was funny was the kid looking at the pictures asks, "Is this your older brother... or your younger brother" and the other kid has to come over and look at the album and go, "Ah that is my younger brother, I do not have an older brother." I mean c'mon how do you not know whether or not you have an older/younger brother until you look at the picture of them. Basically you're saying, "Gee I know I have a brother but I can't remember if he was older or younger than me!" Pretty funny.
20. Failed Art History quiz. Not that funny.
21. Current time writing this post.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

CA Cultural Night was awesome!!!!!

TGIFS, Slow ass service

After-Party, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since I'm bored, the classes I am taking this quarter (17 units)

Chinese 1C
Bio 50 (Heart and blood system)
ICS 151 (Digital Logic Systems)
Asian American Art History 42C (Japanese Art)

Wow I thought this site was down. I mean with the lack of updates and all. I keep wondering what the people visiting my website are thinking. Some of you visit it alot... even when there isn't anything. I think that's pretty cool.

The way my schedule works out this quarter is that Wednesday really is my busiest day of the week. I have class starting at 8, then a class at 11, then a discussion at 1:30 and another discussion at 3.

Later on Erik and I went to some ICS Student/Alumni Career/Internship night thing. We only stayed for the first session which was about startup companies. Afterwards we headed back and on the way we went into a showing of the documentary for Better Luck Tomorrow. I'm really excited about this movie and from what I've heard it was very good. The best part of the documentary is where they're at the Sundance Film Festival, and some dude criticizes the filmmaker, Justin Lin, on how he could do such a thing to Asian Americans (the thing being portraying Asians in such a bad light). And then random people in the audience started getting up and arguing against the dude. Then Roger Ebert, who had been in the audience watching, stood up. Now since this was at the Sundance Festival, I can safely assume that most of the people were real movie snobs who watch independent films. So when Ebert stood up, a whole bunch of people were shush-ing everyone else and tellnig them to be quiet even though Ebert was speaking in a pretty loud voice. You know the situation where the people who want it quiet and are shush-ing you are actually just making it harder for the person that they want to be heard. Well it was exactly like that. So the main argument that Ebert has was, if the actors were all caucasian no one would say anything critical about the storyline and how it disgraces white people.

Specifically quoting...

"There was a person who stood up [after a screening] and said, 'How could you make a movie that was so denigrating to your race?'," explained John Cho, who plays Steve, while hanging near a basketball court at L.A.'s Pan Pacific Park. "[Ebert] stood up and said, 'You wouldn't say that to a white filmmaker,' which is probably true."

Thanks Phil

I hope this film does do well so there are opportunities for Asian actors to do something other than being kung-fu guys (although that's still cool), the pizza delivery boy, or the nerd.

Oh yeah, also I went to some Chinese Caligraphy seminar on Monday for 2 hours. The guy who was speaking had been doing caligraphy for a very long time. Although I forgot the exact time, he started when he was a boy and he looked at least late 50's-70's. And basically he was showing us this famous poem written a long time ago that was about 800 characters long. He spoke of how this Chinese Official back in the mid 90's was very found of caligraphy and this poem especially and over the course of his lifetime had copied it 220+ times. The instructor personally had done it 30-40 times, which is way more than I could ever imagine myself doing.

Let me say, it definitely showed that he had been doing caligraphy for a long time. We had some sample paper on the board, and he mentioned how he never stood up to write before. But his writing was unbelievable, they were straight and no sign of any part of the character being too fat or too thin than the rest of the strokes. It was so unbelievable. It's too bad I didn't bring my camera.

School's started again.

I had two classes today, one at 8 and one at 11. Waking up at 8 wasn't that bad but I think it caught up to me because I fell asleep at my 11 'O Clock class.

Edit: This is indeed a sad day. My hardcore cool blue sunglasses that I've had since the end of senior year in high school has unexpectedly died.

Let us all have a moment of silence.

ICS 121
Chinese 1B
Bio 1B
Well I had planned karaoke but I had not asked everyone yet because of finals week so now most everyone would rather goto the beach so those who want to goto the beach should go to the beach and if I didn't ask you about the karaoke I'm sorry but I was busy with finals and only had asked a few people who had been interested in it before. The only people so far who said they'd rather go to karaoke are.

I will be asking others if they want to go and most people are welcome so whoever wants to come, or more like depending on who comes the room will be about 2-3 dollars and also we'll be eating dinner beforehand. I think. I don't know. Too much stress. Also if no one from semester wants to go then I'm just going to push it back or cancel it altogether.

So I am saying that this invite also goes to people who normally are not at our shindigs: Liz, Ross and Philip.

Yesterday was the last day of classes which meant the last day of my Chinese class. While I have thoroughly enjoyed taking the class. I think I am not going to do so well in the class unless I do extremely well in my final. Nonetheless, it was still all very sad but fortunately I still get to see my old Chinese partners because they're going to be in my class next quarter.

The funniest thing happened though during class, our teacher gave out pencils/highlighters to us. This is so reminiscent of Chinese school when I was little where the teacher would give out stuff for achievements at the end of class such as who got the highest grade/perfect attendance etc. I got a really nice looking mechanical pencil for being the group leader and an orange highlighter for perfect attendance! Haha this is so corny but whatever it was great!

So after my Chinese class ended, I went to go shoot some pool and then Gary came by to visit. We went to eat at Jack In The Box, then headed over to AV to watch some TV, then we went to our Engineering Lecture Hall where they were showing Back to the Future parts I & II! It was so cool seeing it on a projection screen just short of movie theater size. And for the beginning half of the movie it was in black and white.

After watching BTTF I & II again it has moved up on my favorite all time movies list. The basic concept of it is cool and although some of the special effects... look like they were special effects, the movie itself is a classic. Marty outrunning Biff on the skateboard, then running through Biff's car to escape the manure truck or when Marty plays Johnny B. Goode or when Jennifer sees herself in the future (I'm OOOOLLLLDDD/YOOOUNNNGGG), all of those are classic movie moments. Makes me want to get them on DVDs.

So when we finished those it was like 1AM in the morning but yet we somehow ended up back at AV watching TV. We watched some Conan and a spelling bee contest on ESPN. Watching that spelling contest makes me realize what a crappy speller I've become. I use to be able to get some of those words those kids got right but now the words sound like they can have a million possible spellings. When we finally decided to go back to CV it was already 3AM or so.

Which is why I've just now woken up, why the hell is it raining? I didn't see any signs of it yesterday.

UC Irvine is proud to be the UC with the most expensive books, which means that it beats all of the UC's including: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCR, UCSB, UCD. Sadly UC Irvine failed to capture being the most expensive place to buy books as it placed 2nd in the west coast in price of books

I left Friday night for Santa Barbara

The Association was going to an event that was going to be at UCSB and all the major Associations from the other UCs and USC also went.

There are too many things to discuss and too many things to go through to explain properly on this page but I had a blast. There was a lot of driving and lots of traffic. Going up I rode with the President of CA, his gf, the EVP of CA and another person from CA (not trying to be impersonal but I don't think it matters whether you know their names or not). The group of people in CA were all very nice over the weekend even though they didn't know me that well and it's nice to know that there are people out there we go out of their way to be nice.

So the thing I wanted to mention about this trip is that during the festival all the clubs were suppose to think of a cheer to do. Under some strange circumstances, someone decided to do a Strongbad e-mail, specifically the one about Techno. Yes we split into groups of four and the guy who thought it up impersonated Strongbad while the rest of the club did their parts of the song (Bass, Melody, High Pitched Sound, Obligatory Sci-Fi quote) although we instead said, "UCI is here" instead of "The system is down." I'm not sure how many people understood it, I knew some of the UCLA people did, but I think most people enjoyed the comedy of it. Watch the e-mail flash animation and you'll understand why.

I can't even pronounce the word very well but I dislike them greatly.

As though not being Christian is somehow bad and that they must convert everyone to Christianity. I'm not even sure if they're for Christianity or for cults. I mean Jews for Jesus sounds contradictory and uhh cultish.

Look, if someone wants to be Christian, they will be Christian. I don't think someone wakes up and goes, "Hmm, I would like to be a Christian but if only someone with a pamphlet showed me the way". Shoving stupid pamphlets down people's throats who don't want them shoved down their throat is not going to help your cause.

Anyways, Lynn had a journal entry where she talked about one so-called evangelist who was trying to convert or convince her to Christianity (we all get the irony here right? Lynn's a good Christian already...). Well it was my turn today to be hassled by one of them, although it was kind of disappointing.

Comparison with Lynn's confrontation: A female 'evangelist' comes up to her in a very upbeat tone and has Lynn read this pamplhet about the Four Spiritual Seasons.

Now compare that with mine: I'm walking back from my Chinese class, and nearing the outskirts of Campus Village (where I live) and in front of the Science Library (the one shaped like a va-gina).

I'm walking and I'm dead tired and I see these three Asian guys sitting down at a planter. I'm trying to pass them on their right to head into CV when all of a sudden I make eye contact with one of them (uh-oh) and they all give each other a funny look (which I believe turns out to be the 'who's going to approach this victim?' look) and the one on the left stands up.

Now this is where he makes his first mistake. He doesn't head towards me, instead he heads for an intercept course further ahead in the path that I'm walking. Human nature tends to try and avoid contact with objects in their way, so naturally when I see that he's trying to block my way I try to change course to move away from him.

But rather than collide with him (which seems now like a better idea than stopping or swerving around him), I stop. This could have been a critical mistake on my part as I would now be harrased by whatever he was trying to sell. But at that point I didn't know what he wanted from me.

Now this is where he makes his second mistake. He's a guy. A male. A dude. A member of the same sex. HELLO?! Doesn't the Christian religion know that (hetero) sex sells??? I mean if you're going to force me to stand there and listen to some random crap, at least give me something good to look at. teehee ^_^

His third mistake: he was a mumbler. I couldn't understand anything he said and obviously this wasn't a good job for him to be doing.

His fourth mistake: after I deciphered his incoherence, he apparently had said something along the lines of, "Would you like to read this? *holds out pamphlet that says, Four Spiritual Seasons*" Wait, what? He wanted ME to read? He wanted ME to READ? A pamphlet that he's handing out nonetheless. Who's suppose to be spreading the word of God, you or me buddy?

His fifth mistake: he allowed me to say "No" and escape. What kind of Evangelists let's their prey, err victim, err 'party of interest' get away so easily? A guy trying to make me donate blood was more convincing than this guy. I mean at least that guy told me I'd get a free T-Shirt and food if I donated blood. What was this guy offering? Oh yes, he offered to read a pamphlet to me... Wait. Hmm. NO! HE DIDN'T EVEN DO THAT!

Oh yeah, and HE WAS A GUY! (Asuka: no gay comments :), only about Don)

Sometimes I can think of a great title but not a great writeup. Sometimes I can think of a great writeup but severly lacking in its title.

This time I don't really have either a great title nor a great writeup to follow it. But I felt like writing...

1. Why doesn't anyone update with any frequency?


2. I joined a club, club Chinese Association


3. For joining CA, I went with them to the beach (late night bonfire)


4. I saw someone get pants*, and no it was not a girl.


5. The Super Bowl is tomorrow and I have yet to mention it until now. Probably because not many of my friends are big football fans. Go Raiders because I want to see Tim Brown win a Super Bowl.


6. I thoroughly enjoyed Donnie Darko. I think that it would have made more sense to people if they also introduced the time travel pamphlet they mention in the movie. There's a website for it so if anyone wants the link, just IM me.


7. At present I have about 169 people on my buddy list, of which I talk to about 30 on a regular basis and with conversations. Add ten to the total if you count the number of people who only IM me because they want something from me. (When is this essay due? Do you have the problems from two days ago?)


8. Erik recently regained his yearbook from an anonymous female and that got me to think about my yearbook and all these people who wrote keep in touch in my yearbook and left their phone numbers and e-mail addresses. I wonder if I should try them and see if they're actually real. Oh yeah and speaking of my yearbook: Ross forgot to sign mine.


9. Speaking of which, Liz and Ross are big supporters of this site, yet I never talk to them online.


10. Does it make me a phony if I call those numbers, e-mail to those addresses or talk to Liz and/or Ross?


11. I mean phony in the sense as in would they think I am like one of those ten people on my buddy list. Someone with a hidden agenda and only IM'ing you now because I want something from you guys. Like maybe I want you guys to switch your phone service from AT&T to MCI.


12. But I think I'm worried more about what I would say then worried about being phony. I think a lack of topical conversation is my biggest concern when I talk to people.


13. Speaking of which, is my writing terrible? I try to put some sense of humor into my writing but I don't think I'm a terribly great writer. I'd actually prefer to talk to people rather than write to people. Inflection, Intonation and Timing.


14. I miss everyone but they're all up north, all the way east or just too busy here with their jobs.


15. I feel like one of those people who reminisces too much about high school. But people say that high school is the most exciting period in your life. But that's only if you were some kind of mega-popular captain-of-everything kind of person. High school for me was just too much drama, way more than I bargained for. I think if I ever become a writer (read: UNLIKELY) for some high school tv show then I would have plenty to write about.


16. I like UCI, it is a safe environment. But a little too safe. A car can make it more exciting. Car can go far. Car can go far enough to get boba.

Well not really and it's kinda long and it makes no sense and well just keep reading if you want to know about the ninja part and stuff.

So the other day Josh, Erik and I went to Pippin.

Pippin is one of the few Dorm Commons that we have here at UCI. And it is considered by many to be the worst out of the three main DC's mainly because of the low quality of the food and the feeling that you're only eating there because your body requires nourishment and this was the quickest way to get some food.

Although I haven't eaten too many times at Pippin this year, it seemed to have improved, both in the food and the atmosphere. Well actually, not the food.

So the place is pretty packed because people want to eat. This forces us to use the tables located on the 2nd level of the commons. And even then, the tables on this level are also filled. Finally some people leave and we get to sit at a big table.

Now the way this place is designed in case you guys haven't been there (which is what, 90% of you guys) is that you can look out over the 1st level from the 2nd level. And 'lo and behold we get a table that allows us to overlook our minions on the 1st level.

So we're eating our food and we see Albert and then a few minutes later we see Esther talking to Albert. We had planned to go visit Esther after we had eaten. But the problem was that everytime we went to go visit, she was not there. So we finish our meal and had downstairs to visit Albert and Esther. Only Esther had left (or so we thought). We talk to Albert for a bit and then I turn around 'cause a familiar voice was calling out. It was Esther and she was right behind us.

I told Esther that we were planning to go visit her right after we had left Pippin but she didn't believe me! She complained about how we always say that we tried visiting her but we really didn't.

So that's when Erik Josh and I went all out ninja. Esther and her friends were leaving about the same time we were, but they were taking their time. We snuck into their dorm hall. Climbed the stairs and slowly crept into her hallway. We carefully erased her whiteboard and replaced it with our Ninja calling card...

WHATEVAH!

- Erik, Shuan and Josh

And we carefully snuck back out into the main area of the floor only to hear Esther and her friends right below us! We quickly attempted to find cover behind a wall, but Esther was taking too long to get up the stairs. We also didn't know if she was going to surprise attack us by way of elevator. I hurried and went into the other hall to look for an escape route, possibly by jumping out a window. Luckily there were stairs in the other hall and we slowly crept down them and escaped out the back with our lives.