The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Week Three: Lord, Have Mercy

9-10-2001

What a weekend. First, I took the BART back at about 4:30 in the afternoon. The sign next to the track said "Fremont, SF, Colma, so I assumed the train would go through all the cities. I got on the train, and every time it stopped at a station the com would say "Fremont, SF, Colma." After a few stops, it started saying just "SF, Colma" and after a few more, it started only saying, "Colma." I didn't think anything of this, because I knew that Fremont was the last stop on the map and I couldn't possibly miss it because it wouldn't go anywhere after that. However, I checked the map, just to be sure; after all, none of the streets we were passing rang any bells.

When I saw the map, I discovered I was going the wrong way, and just then the guy on the com said "Daly City," which was pretty much the last stop. I disembarked and quickly called Gloria, who was supposed to pick me up in Fremont and take me to college cell group. Then I took the next train to Fremont, which wasted me an extra hour or more, as well as nearly four more bucks. At least I made it back at 6:30, which was when cell was supposed to begin, but Gloria insisted that we go back to her house first so we could eat, which wasted us another hour or so. Finally, we made it to Emily's house and had cell, which was cool. She has a very slow computer that can hardly handle Counter-Strike, but her cable connection is FAST.

Everyone decided to go eat at Denny's afterward, and after we ate there, Jonny decided to rent Memento, so I, along with Leedah, Ben, Zeke, and Steve, went to his house and watched it on his enormous TV. We were planning to sleep over, but Leedah wanted to go to Edgie's to play some pool. Though it was after midnight, Ben, Zeke, and I joined him and we played some billiards until past 3:00 am. The teams were Leedah and I, against Zeke and Ben. Both won two games each, and in the tie-breaking fifth round, we took 'em DOWN. Whee, that was fun. Then it was off to Leedah's house to catch three hours of sleep before getting up at 7:00 to climb...MISSION PEAK.

Ah, Mission Peak. Leedah went ahead first because he needed to get home to be with his relatives, but I went with Zeke, Gloria, and Helen. At first glance, the mountain seemed FREAKING HUGE and it looked like it would take ages to reach the top, but in fact, it was nothing like that; it was MORE HUGE and it took MANY AGES. Truth be told, however, it wasn't actually as difficult as I expected, because Zeke told Glora (who told me) that he died about three times the last time he went, and I only found myself dying about two times, or maybe even once, about two-thirds of the way up. At any rate, we made it to the top! And at the top we stayed, for nearly two hours, burning time as the sun fried our idling bodies. Then, after refilling our water bottles with the jugs that the Boy Scout troop so kindly offered to us, we descended (slowly, because of Gloria's paranoid flailing and shuffling). We walked all the way back to Leedah's house, drove to Gloria's house (where I snapped my sunglasses), and Dad picked me up.

I had a lot of stuff to take care of at home. I did laundry, bought some new sunglasses from Rite Aid, tons of stuff. Before I knew it, it was time for cell group, which was held at Morgan's house. That was nifty, with our new program and all, and of course, we had our regular fusses with assorted things, as always, but for the first time, they weren't my responsibility! I miss being cell leader, but it was liberating at the same time. Hmm.

We came home, but it was no time for me to sleep. I had a baptism class to teach on Sunday! I went thought the whole agenda, scribbled a bunch of notes, and organized everything together in my head, and THEN I went to sleep.

Sunday morning came, and I brought my camera to take massive pictures, since many people would be leaving this week for college (sniff). Interestingly, two people on the baptism list didn't show up and two who weren't did. I tried to be a little more serious about this and not rant or joke too much, but to me I seemed a little boring. But David (Jeff Sing's younger brother! I wonder what Jeff is up to) said it only seemed like 20 minutes (it was actually about 45, I'm guessing). Anyway, today Pastor Liu did a baby dedication for Gabriel, and Jena asked me to take pictures for them! Wow, I felt so honored. Then he did a nice guest sermon. After all that, I cracked out the camera and clicked away.

There was an India mission meeting, so Wayne's mom took Tony and me out to eat some noodles, and then she dropped us off back at the church. We still had more than an hour to wait, but luckily Ling-ling and Amy were still around, and Eric popped out too. I spent most of the waiting time by drawing Eric's lab safety poster for his little project (which, by the way, turned out ROCKIN'). About when I finished, the meeting ended, and I quickly caught Shirley before she left to see when she was leaving for Berkeley. She was leaving right when she got home, and I definitely couldn't make that, so I caught Crystal right before SHE left and learned that she was leaving Monday morning. I decided I could make that and narrowly escape missing my 11:00 class. But at least I had an extra evening at home.

I took care of more things. I packed, bought screws for the deck, masking tape, milk, and the Memento DVD. I was hoping to watch it with Dad and Tim because I knew they would like it, but we had to work on the deck in the back yard, which took a long time. By the time we finished, it was 9:30, but I managed to persuade Dad to let us watch some of the movie. At 11:30, Mom said it was time to go to bed, so we stopped the movie.

All right, about today. I got up pretty early, packed some last minute things together (but forgetting to pack The Wizard of Oz, which I needed to read by 11:00) and went to Crystal's house. From there, we went to Ralph's house so she could drop off her passport and stuff for India, then to Wells Fargo Bank so she could open some sort of account, then to a gas station to get gas, and then to Berkeley. Unfortunately I don't get to talk to Crystal much, but I should because she really is fun to talk to, as it is to listen the random comments she makes to herself.

Well, she dropped me off at Unit 2, where I dashed to class, was bored, came back, and ate some stuff. I am already missing the people that are leaving this week. Oh yeah, and I got pestered by some people that wanted me to go to their spa place and get a facial and full body massage, etc. They made it sound really good and I almost bought into it. What's happening to me?

9-11-2001

Lord, have mercy. I woke up at 7:00 today to go to the RSF, as usual. Seconds later, we got a phone call from one of Peter's friends, who told us that a hijacked plane had crashed into the Empire State Building. I didn't believe it, of course, but I checked online to see what he was talking about. It turned out that he got some facts wrong, but the truth was even worse. Two hijacked commercial jetliners smashed into the World Trade Center towers, another into the Pentagon, and another crashed near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Right now I'm thinking that this is a foreign government action. To facilitate this type of operation, much manpower, planning, and connections with airline securities are needed; a small band of terrorists could never pull off such a task. Surely there were at least five terrorists to each plane, because 200-odd passengers can easily overpower a few armed men, and the organization needed (getting through security, airline personnel, etc.) is mind-boggling. People are comparing this to Pearl Harbor, but in fact, it is worse. First, the casualties are much higher (two hours after impact, both towers collapsed from top to bottom in a frightening chain reaction not unlike the destruction of buildings in Independence Day. There was news footage of people running down the streets and being consumed by the explosion, smoke, and dust. I'm guessing that the towers fell because of the monumental strain placed on them from the gigantic holes in them, caused by the airplane collisions), and second, it was a civilian center, not even a military base. People are also saying that we shouldn't take "revenge," but remember, in the 1940's we declared war as a direct result of Pearl Harbor. Whoever did this MUST pay, not only to serve global justice, but also to show the world that you simply cannot do this kind of thing without consequences. This is another day that will live forever in infamy.

Well, I went to the RSF, and school, but does it matter? I'm also worried about the people who need to fly to school this week. I know that Gloria now has to take an 8-hour drive to San Diego. Ling-ling was lucky that her flight left yesterday; and even luckier that she had a hotel room ahead of time; she is right smack near the O'Hara Airport.

I can only hope that this was just a mad act of terrorism and not a precursor to a full-scale, massive world-wide assault. Such an act of violence can (and, according to the news, already has) sparked smaller riots, attacks, and explosions in the Middle East and Asia. We may very well be on the brink of war.

But with who? We don't know yet, but there has been some shockingly disturbing footage of Palestinian soldiers and young children laughing and cheering after learning of the destruction of the World Trade Center. There are also a well-known terrorist, Bin Laden, that may be suspect because of recent threats, but as of now, nothing is conclusive. As I said earlier: Lord, have mercy.

9-12-2001

Surprisingly, I awoke at 9:00 this morning. Actually, I woke up just before 7:00 but went back to sleep until I got out of bed at 9:00. I went over to Unit 1 to eat breakfast, came back, and then went to class, which was a little boring, as usual. In the film class, we talked a little bit about the media coverage of the WTC attack, since it had to do with what we were talking about on Monday. What I don't understand is why people are saying things like "oh, well we need to see what we did to make them do that" and "well, they must have had SOME reason for doing it." It doesn't matter what we or anyone else did; THEY initiated an attack on tens of thousands of civilian Americans. I even heard people say that we shouldn't show footage of the attack too close to footage of the cheering Palestinians, because we will draw unfair conclusions and relationships between the two. But they ARE related! The WTC came down, and they cheered! They were parallel events and the former directly caused the latter! What the hell are these people talking about?

Here's the bottom line. I'm not saying we should go out and nuke the bastards (thought this may in fact turn out to be the optimal solution), I'm saying that this crime against the human race must not be tolerated, and whoever is behind the attacks, no matter what type of "excuse" or "reason" they have, undeniably murdered thousands of innocent people without warning or apparent cause, and they must be held responsible for their actions and face the consequences of those actions. If war must be declared on a country (if indeed a country is found to be responsible), then let it be declared. It is not out of "revenge," "hatred," or "ignorance" that I say this; I do not harbor any of these attitudes. But whoever did this has done something horrible, of almost unbelievable magnitude (buildings continue to crumble and the body count continues to climb now as I write), and the world must learn that behavior of this kind is neither necessary nor tolerated.

Some sort of steam mechanism went out in this unit, so we had to eat at Unit 1. I ate a whole ton of food and now I don't feel so good. But I still went to the Seinfeld decal, but there were so many people that we had to fill out these silly questionnaires in order for them to select who would get in. There were things such as "How did Newman learn to climb trees like that?" and "Tell us something funny" and "Make a strange noise so that everyone can hear" and "Draw ANYTHING on the back of this paper." We'll just have to see if I get in!

Some updates from the news, and from Mom's phone call a few minutes ago: The terrorists hijacked the planes with RAZORS. Using razors placed into small plastic containers, they killed all the flight attendants, drawing the pilots out of the cockpit, allowing them to enter and seize control of the aircraft. According to cell phone calls placed from the planes before the flights went down, passengers were also murdered by stabbings. It is now very likely that the crash in Pennsylvania was due to some sort of scuffle between passengers and the terrorists (one caller on the flight told his wife that he and a few other passengers were devising some kind of plans to fight back). Another stewardess called her family and managed to speak a few words before the line went dead.

Now, I'm thinking: how did they take control of the plane without firearms? Say you have ten men with razors. Fifty unarmed people (and there were much more than 50 on the airplanes) can easily overpower them. Was it fear? It must have been, except in the Pennsylvania case. I probably would have fought them, because even if you lose your life (or a few others; in the 50 against 10 case, I would liberally guess that around three or four would die and maybe another ten would be seriously injured), you (and everyone else) will still die anyway if the terrorist get their way. The only problem with your bravery, however, would be other people chickening out on you. If you mustered enough courage to attack the razor-wielding men, and no one came to follow and help you, you would most certainly die without taking even ONE down with you, and therefore you would waste your life and at the same time discourage the rest of the living.

Mom said that the police discovered that some Arabs moved to Florida a year ago and took flight training, among other ways of planning. This was going on for a whole year! Man...

"Leave not the mansion so long tenantless

Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall

And leave no memory of what it was."

-William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act V, Scene IV

9-13-2001

I actually got to talk and eat with Gloria (Liu, that is) for a whole half hour today at breakfast, before I went to the RSF! Finally! I had barely seen a glimpse of her since school started. And not only that, but I saw her again in passing later today on campus! AND I also got to IM Gloria (Yen, that is) for the first time since she left for San Diego! And you know what else? Gloria (Liu, that is) really liked A.I. (so did Crystal)! And Gloria (Yen, that is) really wants to see it! How unusual! What a glorious day (heh get it?)!

Well, everything else was kind of normal. I dozed off in Shakespeare, as usual (but at least we are out of the Henry VI nonsense and are moving into the comedies, which are a LOT more fun to read). Then there was a screening for the English 173 class, in which we watched the 1924 version of The Thief of Bagdad, starring Douglas Fairbanks. That was all right, but I fell asleep momentarily a few times. After the movie, I went to Fat Slice and bought myself a huge cheese pizza slice for a buck with my coupon (what a great deal), then went back to Davidson to watch the rest of The Sixth Sense from where I had left off earlier in the afternoon. It was a good movie, and Haley Joel Osment acted really well (as he did in A.I.; Bruce Willis also did a nice job). The ending was kind of spoiled for me, though, because someone already told me what happened. Doh.

Peter came back from his Mexican festival thing. Right now it's party time outside my room. These people are crazy. Meanwhile, I'm still debating whether or not I should watch A.I. tomorrow night; I don't want to walk home by myself at 1:00 in the morning.

9-14-2001

A boring discussion in the morning, and then I was free! I went to IV tonight; it was cool. Then I went to catch the 10:00 screening of A.I., and guess who I met? DANNY, Gloria's friend, who happens to look and act a lot like Gigolo Joe! And he had two of his friends from Mission: Melissa and some other girl who's name I don't remember. AND Hung-Tzu (I know that's her name but I can't spell it). Anyway, I sat between her and Melissa and told them that Danny looked like Gigolo Joe, and that it was a really good movie. We watched the movie (too many people were laughing at parts that weren't actually that funny...like scenes with Teddy in them), then we split. Hung-Tzu caught the shuttle home (I hope) and I dashed back to Davidson as fast as I could (it was 12:30 in the morning. So actually now it is really the 15^th, but I'm talking about my Friday). Right now Peter is still out on the town, heh.