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

Angst angst angst swear curse swear crazy crazy angst swear curse, society sucks, and I'm a stupid jerk.

More book-a-minutes

I recently bought alot of new clothes over Memorial Day weekend. I'm not usually one to shop 'cause I don't like having to spend all this time shopping for clothes. Remember in Elementary school it didn't really matter what you wore 'cause none of the kids really cared? Wait, what they did?

Yeah so I bought some shirts, finally got new shoes and got a messenger bag (queue Southpark "Young Messengeahh" voice). Initially I only had a couple of shirts and my pair of shoes but then my parents decided to go to South Coast after we dropped our sister off at the airport. I didn't feel like going but I got overruled. So i went to go buy stuff and make the most of it and I bought some more shirts and my bag.

My mom's funny, she bought two pairs of shoes and wanted to buy a purse. I think she has to buy one for every season cause I could have sworn she just bought a purse and shoes a couple of months ago.

I have in my possession a video of a guy (from Japan no less) who beats the original Super Mario Bros. game in about 12 minutes. But that is not the amazing thing about this video. He does insane shit. I mean completely off the wall. You want me to send this to you. Trust me. It is incredible. Wow, just wow.

Sometime this past week Erik and I watched Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai. I can't really say whether or not I liked this movie. Do not see this if you are looking for a fast-paced action movie. I don't get this movie. When he has guns you get double vision? RZA making random guest appearances? I don't get this movie. He's waving his gun like a samurai waving his sword? Wait, why is Forest Whitaker a hardcore samurai assassin? Why do they keep showing him stealing cars and then just drive around for 20 minutes? I don't get this movie.

Friday night was All-UC at LBC convention center. All-UC is where all the 5 So Cal UC's battle it out in a dance competition. It is indeed quite competetive. Shawn and I read each other's minds and decided that we should both wear red. Waiting 3 hours until the thing actually started _because I went with Ed and Shawn and David, who had to go early to "help"_ sucked. I felt like I was being a bother to everyone so I just tried to stay out of the way after a while.

When the show actually started it was pretty cool. Lots of the teams had cool dance routines. Some schools you can also add, "dance scandalous and suggestively." But in the end UCLA won against defending champion UCI. :(

After the whole dance show they opened the floor up for the normal out-of-rhythm people to dance. My back started to hurt probably because I stood in one place too long. I tried to have fun but after a while I just gave up, went out, and resting my back then went back in.

And yeah after an exhaustive night, I went to eat at Denny's

And then today. For most of the morning I was packing and organizing my stuff at the apartment and browsing the interweb. My sisters came down to pick me up after my oldest sis flew in from up north. The whole family decided to go eat at Todai in the Puente Hills Mall (where they filmed BTTF) and ate there. Sushi is good but don't eat too many too quick or else you get sick.

Speaking of sick (this means if you don't want to hear something sick, albeit funny, skip this paragraph), during our dinner I had to take an "important" trip to the bathroom. I'm sitting on the can and I'm in the big stall which has the toilet facing the remaining two stalls. A kid comes in, enters the closest stall near mine. He slams the door several times back and forth before he finally turned around settled down and went to pee. Except he urinated onto the floor. I don't know anyway to describe it. He didn't lose control of his aim or anything. He basically pissed in long bursts that completely missed the toilet. Big Double You Tee Eff to that.

So in short, Todai = good = expensive. Thanks sis for paying :D

After we ate, we went down to the Fullerton AMC 20 to watch The Matrix Reloaded. My mid-sis, cousin and 'rents hadn't seen it yet so we all went to go watch it. Viewing it a second time makes me reconsider lots of stuff throughout the movie except (MINOR SPOILER: the Raving/Sex scene still burns my eyes).

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.

Yesterday, Erik and I went with Toni-Lynne and Diana to go see Down With Love, Starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. It was set in the mid 1960's and has a campy retro feel to it. The movie was decent, but it gets the most points for being very stylish to go along with a fairly cool plot. It also features what has to be the craziest next-to-5-minute monologue I've ever seen. Ewan McGregor = kick ass A-

Also I guess I am now CPR trained? I had to take a session for my Bio 50 class. So now I guess if any of you go into cardiac arrest, choke on a piece of steak, or forget that you can't breathe underwater, I'll be there to rescue you! (Oh yeah, also make sure you are a girl, also, be cute as hell too! :)

Saturday I went to LACMA to do my description of a sculpture for my Art History class. We went to UCLA first to eat a quick lunch with E*, the parking meters there are brutal. The meter I had gave you 7.5 minutes per quarter. So I ended up putting in 6 or so quarters to have enough time to eat. After we finished eating I had to look up what statue I had to look at because I forgot to write it down. When I came back to the car though the meter had expired. Good thing I didn't get a ticket though.

After that I headed over to the LACMA museum that was purported to be close by. Turns out it's a good half hour drive away from UCLA when you take the local streets. When Erik and I got there we tried to find parking and it took us a while before we finally hit the jackpot. There was a meter spot right next to the museum that had about an hour and a half's worth of time on it.

So I get out and I go into the Japanese Gallery and spent a good half hour describing it and taking pictures of it. I took it from various angles and different lighting filter. I think I took a total of 40 or so pictures.

Afterwards we went to the Borders in Brea and Erik got the Third Eye Blind CD, Out of the Vein.

For some reason while I was driving into and back from LA. There were a whole bunch of limos. Well that part's not surprising since for a lot of high schools it was Prom Night.

But what pissed me off is those stupid limos cutting me off. They are a good two car lengths long yet they still accelerate and try to cut me off when there obviously is not enough space for them to be in there. Geez, that guy is responsible for the 10-20 people in there and he's risking their lives by trying to drive faster than me so he can what, pull ahead of me in the lane. Pfft... so lame.

Especially the last limo that cut me off (I think there were about 5 limos that did it during the day). We're coming down from the 91E onto the 57N over that huge interchange bridge. There are two lanes on that interchange and I was in the left lane, the limo on the right. The two cars in front of the limo entered the 57 in front of me and there was about half a cars length between the end car and me. And I'm driving normally and all of a sudden I see this huge limo trying to speed up past me. I'm thinking, "Oh this limo's going to HAVE TO slow down, there's no way he's going to fit that limo in half a cars length." But you know what? He does it anways. So here's this limo trying to cut into half a car's length of space. Obviously the smart choice was for me to slow all the way down so he had enough space to squeeze past.

And of course when I get into the lane on the limo's left and begin to pass him he has the nerve to look at me as though I did something wrong. Damn, it's not as though I was trying to cut him off from the merger lane. I mean if there are two lanes merging into one, the rule of thumb is to alternate the order of the cars so that the car in front and back of you are from the opposite lane of the one you were in. And I had let the two cars in the right lane go ahead of me. Why the hell was this limo driver thinking HE was right. I wonder what would have happened if we had crashed though. The people in the limo probably would have gotten mad at me instead of the limo driver for ruining their night. But I assume I'd be in the right seeing how the limo tried to cut into the lane when it wasn't his turn and when he didn't have enough room. Oh well, better to yield to assholes like that and then blow by them afterwards.

Yeah, so, later on in the night I went to see The Matrix Reloaded with Pranav and Don. I enjoyed the movie, I understand why people would not like some parts of it but I thought that it gave you a reasonable cliffhanger.

That's about it.

Spoilers ahead, don't click unless you want to know about the movie... Seriously. Don't-!RM-

My explanation of the Source/Architect (AKA Colonel Sanders scene)

Basically the initial Matrix was perfect but no one accepted it because they weren't given a choice. The Architect created The Oracle to figure out what was wrong. She realized that the problem was that the humans need to be given a choice as to whether or not they wanted to be in the Matrix. So they implemented that into their "equation", only this equation worked 99% of the time. Therefore 1% will always reject the Matrix and realize it for what it is. The humans that choose to reject the Matrix are set "free" (even though they are not). The machines choose to accept this minor flaw becaues the numbers would be kept low (1 out of a 100). However, every once in a while a special anamoly will come and majorly screw up the rate of people who choose to not believe in the Matrix (AKA Neo). But see this is the part where you realize that they're not really given a choice because as soon as Zion contains too many people the Machines just go into Zion and destroys all the humans in Zion. The 25(17?) people choosen to replace Neo are then made as the new creators of "Zion". And then the whole process starts all over. But during this whole time apparently the anamoly has learned from previous version of itself and in the end Neo chose Trinity over saving humankind.

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.

Interesting conversation...
-!RM-
Me: so the dawson's creek series finale was last night
Me: and we missed it
Erik: FUCK!!
Me: yeha i know
Erik: Dawson: Joey, I have teh gay
Me: i can't believe we went to see a job rather than dawson's creek
Erik: Joey: wtf LOL
Erik: ::both start LOLing::

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 ...

Sneaky Ninja Eyes are now in full effect

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?!

So Better Luck Tomorrow has been out for nearly a month and I thought I'd post some thoughts about it. If you have not watched the movie do not read on as there are spoilers abound and I don't like movies spoiled for me so this is your fair warning. Also assume that comments will have spoilers as well.

SPOILERS (POSSIBLY) AHEAD!

My Thoughts
I liked the movie.
I hated the ending.
What is the significance of her (Stephanie) driving the Audi? Also why did Ben ask Daric about the newspaper article (w/ no answer either).
Was that Camelot?

Some people have said why Justin Lin would portray Asians like that and I think Roger Ebert gave the best answer to this when he said (to a critic who made this point), "You wouldn't say that to a white filmmaker." I would rather have Asians portrayed as characters with underlying flaws than as a character who's only point in the movie is to provide comic relief, martial arts mastery, or delivery pizza.

Some people have also asked why they should support this movie, "Just because it has Asians?" To which I reply, Yes. If for nothing else watch this movie to support Asian filmmaking. The fact of the matter is if this movie does well it will lead to other opportunities for Asian directors/actors. If this movie tanks. Movie executives will look on this as though no one wants to see these type of movies. I mean there have been plenty of other All-Asian casts (The Debut, to name one) but none of them have gotten this much interest. This is why you should watch Better Luck Tomorrow. So that other directors/actors in the future get their fair opportunity to be in a movie.

So some of the guys went to see X-Men 2 last night. Some arriving later than others *cough*James*cough*

Jean Grey, aka Famke Janssen equals sexy

Everyone must listen to the Ja Rule MP3s duets2 and duets3

I'll send 'em to you if you wanna hear them.

HOLLLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH