The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Week Eight: An Eddy of Thought

10-14-2001

On Friday morning I took care of a couple of errands; namely, I submitted my application, resume, and cover letter to the Residential Computing Office! Man, if I land this job, I'll be rolling in the dough! Sometime in the afternoon, I left for the BART station, rode back to Fremont while catching up on Romeo and Juliet, and went to Zeke's house, where I co-prepared the discussion while ogling at his MP5s and his M4A1. During the actual meeting we had some quite funny episodes; Monique unwittingly stated "they make you feel good" when referring to a certain subject (drugs) while we were referring to something else (which I won't mention). Then later Zeke told Emily, for some reason I can't recall, "Dude, you talk hella ghetto," which was pretty funny. Then, finally, Leedah and I were fortunate to see Zeke's rendition of how he would act retarded to get accepted to Berkeley. The meeting lasted longer than we had expected because halfway through the discussion we suddenly sidetracked onto the topic of what movies were OK to see and what weren't. After the end of our meeting, Zeke bestowed upon me his left-safety-deficient Beretta 92F! Wow, I was so happy. And on a completely unrelated and light note (again), the Nvidia share price closed at $40.38, leaving me with a total of $1,010.75 from my starting point at $795!

Saturday left me dead tired, for some reason. In the morning I watched some cartoons with Tim (Metabots), and I went to see Dr. Han for a contacts check up. He has ordered some new ones (finally; I should have gone a long time ago) that are a new design and are supposed to bring my eyesight to ALMOST 20/20 vision after wearing them at night! NEAT!

Back at home, I played some long-time needed Final Fantasy IV, and finally beat that stupid Dark Elf, and made it all the way to the Tower of Zot. YES! At around 5:00, we went to that restaurant on Monterey, so support the economy (and support it we did, because we burned a good 55 bucks right there on the spot...enough for The Phantom Menace, Final Fantasy, and Empire of the Sun DVDs). I was so tired...but I did worship for cell group, for the first time since I was relieved of my position as cell leader. Haha.

And today. Well, I got to see the new worship team additions in action; Glen and Richard. They both did very well and even better than I expected. Richard is quite talented on the keyboards and actually plays very similarly to the way I do. Interesting. On the way home I picked up a bookshelf that Dad and Mom ordered, and back at home I packed and did a little bit of manual labor for the family. Then Dad and I drove to the BART, and I took it to Berkeley, finishing (at last) Romeo and Juliet on the way. So now I am back here, studying and being really, really hot. AGH.

10-15-2001

I was amused to find that Dr. Merritt had videotaped his lecture for our English 173 class since he was gone. I was NOT amused to find that in the Film 25A class, I received a freaking C- for my shot analysis from The Birth of a Nation. You know why? Because I wrote it down like it was. None of that interpretive crap; I only recorded what actually happened on the screen. Mrs. Fabe handed out some examples of A graded shot analyses, and you know what I found? Papers brimming with line after line of thick shit. People can say Griffith was a genius, but to me he isn't so great; just because you can manipulate a bunch of dumb people doesn't make you a good filmmaker. I mean, if you "look hard enough," you can see "something" of what these intellectual retards are talking about, but frankly I don't think Griffith was smart enough to incorporate that kind of thing into his propagandistic films. Oh well, I am going to redo the assignment and suck up this time. They're not the only ones that know how to bullshit! Forgive me for using the term so often (it isn't really a bad word anyway...), but the thing is, in my major, shit is what it's all about.

In the afternoon I had a lot of fun with my editing group; we re-edited about half of The Life of an American Fireman, and it looks pretty good! A heck of a lot better than it was originally, at least. Back at Davidson, I watched Full Metal Jacket, a rockin' Stanley Kubrick movie, and I also wasted a lot of time trying to think of something to write for my mobster class. Man, essays are harder than I remember.

10-16-2001

I ate breakfast today! Then I tried to write some more for my Art Studies paper, but it was just so hard to get things written down. I spent so much time just sitting at my desk and thinking that I didn't even get around to reading one bloody smidgen of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fortunately, the Shakespeare class is canceled for this week! Unfortunately, however, I received my midterm from the class back today and received a dismal 22.25 out of 30! Arrgh! I threw in all the meticulously crafted BS I could muster, and all I got for it was lousy, stinking, mid-range C! Sigh. Oh well, I'm just going to have to get used to having tough-grading professors. Community college softened me up too much.

I wrote a little more of my paper in the afternoon, then drowned my sorrows and woe in a few glorious, frenetic rounds of Counter-Strike (which I hadn't played for months! I reinstalled and updated everything, and it was great!), ate with Peter at the DC, and then went off to small group. After that, I took with me Leon's whole binder of DivX movies (mainly for Goodfellas, so I could review anything I needed to add to my paper). So now I've spent my whole freaking night working on that cursed paper. And it's still not done yet.

10-17-2001

I went to bed relatively early last night, and I was expecting to get up earlier today, but instead I was awakened at 9:30 by a phone call from Ralph (regarding the worship team this Sunday). I quickly brushed and polished my paper for Art Studies, ate, and went to school. Strangely, I was extra tired in class even though I had more sleep than usual. And speaking of usual, we watched The Usual Suspects in Art Studies. A funny thing happened (SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE; SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T): in the scene in which Keaton is shown as Keyser Soze, this guy in front of me said to the girl next to him, "I knew it!" Hahaha (if you haven't seen the movie, you won't get it. Then again, if you haven't seen it, you shouldn't be reading this paragraph).

Oh yeah, before I went to the Art Studies class, I went to Moffitt again to re-watch the scene from The Birth of a Nation on which I did my shot analysis. This time around, I added more description and detail to the shot titles and composition, wrote out the editing transitions, and BSed a whole lot of symbolism crap. I better get a good grade this time!

Wheeler is having a free advance screening of K-Pax next Tuesday! Woohoo!

At PSP, we only had three people today: Elliot, Huai-Ming, and me. This gave us more time to pray and share. I shared a bit about my junior-college-to-university woes. Ahh, if feels so much better to be prayed for.

YESSS! No class tomorrow until 5:00, when I get to watch Pinocchio! AND, I have been added to the Team Omega unit! I am Omega 9, rifleman! Oh, and again, on a completely irrelevant and heavier note, my Nvidia stocks went down; I lost about twenty bucks today. But that's OK, I made a hundred yesterday. On another completely irrelevant note, I heard Elliot and Huai-Ming talking at PSP about keeping a journal, and it reminded me that this is actually the longest period of time ever that I've kept a continuous journal going; eight weeks and running, as a matter of fact. I impress myself. The main reasons behind it is to exercise and develop my writing skills, while at the same time just keeping a record of my life, which someday I will be able to look on and laugh/cry/smile/frown. Sometimes I read a few entries from my old journals that I occasionally kept and am reminded of events, thoughts and feelings that I experienced that I normally wouldn't remember.

Here's a random observation for you, an epitome of irrelevance, an eddy of thought. An interesting thing about the mind is that it associates unrelated things together just because they both happen to occur at the same time. We learn it in psychology. If you hit the lever and get food, you will eventually associate hitting the lever with receiving food. It's just so strange. For example, I was driving down a street one day (or perhaps it was a parking lot; I can't recall) and suddenly I remembered what I was thinking a few weeks ago when I was driving in the exact same spot. The spot and the thought had nothing to do with each other, but because they were both present at the time, my brain paired the image of one with the other. Another example was about two weeks ago, when I was at Ralph's house. Jena was feeding Gabriel formula from a bottle, and when I smelled that formula, I suddenly was bombarded with memories of the counter-top from my old house in Iowa or something. It must have been because I had made formula for Leslie on that counter-top so many years ago. The mind is a strange thing, isn't it? How can you possibly deny the fact that God exists when we have brains as complex as the ones we have? And when did I ever start addressing a second party in my journal?

10-18-2001

I had no Shakespeare class today, so I read a big chunk of Le Avventure di Pinocchio, the original story of Pinocchio. It is very different from the Disney version to which we are all so accustomed. For one thing, Pinocchio kills the cricket with a mallet in the beginning of the story. The whole story is just a lot longer, darker, and more complicated. Now I can see how some of the scenes correlate with the ones in A.I. Oh, and I also watched South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. It is a really funny movie but it has it's gross bits (although it actually wasn't as vulgar as I thought it would be. Kids are going to watch it, you know).

At about 3:45 I went to the RSF and did some working out; a little heftier work than usual, and now my chest is really sore. Then I went to the Bear-cade (where all the students get to waste their precious money and time playing arcades) and picked up a couple of passes to the FREE advance screenings of K-Pax and Life as a House! I can't wait until next Tuesday so I can catch a free movie and see it before everyone else does! After that I went to the English 173 screening, where we watched two Silly Symphonies: The Grasshopper and the Ants and The Moth and the Flame. The feature presentation of the night was Disney's Pinocchio.

I ate and went back to my room. Leon dropped by, and I showed him "Max Payne" and "Worms World Party." I finally found out how to open that darn gate in Max Payne! It was a switch that I missed before. Man.

8-19-2001

No classes or discussions today! I spent my day so far watching Romeo Must Die, reading the rest of Pinocchio, and writing a bit of the essay that's due Monday. I also played some more "Max Payne" since I finally found out how to get out of that subway. A funny thing I just heard outside my door: "My friend told me you weirdo British people put sugar on your popcorm. DISGUSTING!"