The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Week Nine: Minimus

10-21-2001

Friday night I went to IV, which was in a totally different location. Oh well. I saw Crystal there; she came in a bit late and sat next to me! Crystal is really a lot of fun on the rare occasions I get to see her. Hah. And Leon was sitting next to me on the other side, and we were doing all these dopey tricks with credit cards and business cards.

After the meeting I was very gentleman-like and walked Crystal and some other girl whose name I can't remember (Hung-Tzu asked me since she was also in Unit 2 and Leon was going to Soda Hall) back to wherever they were going. Then the whole family came up from San Jose to pick me up and go home! Wow, sounds like a nice gesture, but it was REALLY so I could be home on Saturday to do a massive load of random errands. Grr. I spent all of Saturday running about, driving here and there, mailing this from the post office and making copies of that...but at least I got to pay a trip to Circuit City and get The Phantom Menace on DVD! And I saved a few bucks too, because the today it went up to $23 (I got it for $18)! Oh yeah, and we had worship practice; just Jon Hwong, Tim, and me. Jon was pretty loud, so when I got back home I decided to ask Marie or Leedah if we could borrow their reed sticks. I left an IM for Marie, and I called Leedah, who told me that he would bring them. And you know what? Today, he didn't even show up! Luckily, Jon controlled the volume very well (even during practice it was a bit loud, but he really came through for the service; it was great) and the session went REALLY well. Whew!

Anyway, back to Saturday. I also did tons of laundry, and missed Crystal's birthday party thing at Tony's restaurant, where, as I was informed today, she received a brand spanking new Honda Civic! Man! I should have hitched a ride back to Berkeley with her. But I ended up taking the BART (on the way proofreading Eric Dun's short paper on The Scarlet Letter and reading some of A Midsummer Night's Dream on the way) and walked to Davidson in the dark and dangerous streets.

10-22-2001

I went to sleep last night at 3:00, writing that shot analysis essay. Then, when I printed it, my printer ran out of ink! So I ran down to the computer lab to print it, but they didn't open until 12:00 or something! So I just figured I would talk to the teacher. At class I was SO tired, I slept through a lot of the lectures and films, even though the film today was pretty well made, unlike some of the doofy crap we've been seeing recently. I talked with the professor after class and she said it was OK for me to hand it in later today. I went back to Davidson, printed the essay out in the lab, went back to my room to play some Max Payne (I think you're supposed to italicize game titles), and then went to hand it in to her. Since I was there, I discussed with her a few of the problems I've had with keeping up with the plots and stories of the films. She said I may have ADD and should get tested for it; of course, I was very skeptical about that because no one has ever of my having ADD (not even Mom, who studied psychology and therapy and all that), and besides, I don't really believe in ADD anyway. But at least I handed in the paper and a redo of the shot analysis table.

After that I went downstairs to work with my editing group on The Life of an American Fireman. We finished my shot list today; mostly it was just a severely cut-down version of the original, but now it is a lot more fast-paced and exciting, and there are some rad position matches in it now. It looks really nice; we did a really good job, and we still have half a semester left to work on some more, if we that is what we decide.

Peter was too tired to eat dinner (he went to sleep even later than me), so I went myself. I found Richard in the DC so I sat with him and ate a whole lot of unhealthy food.

I was just getting back into my study mode when the freaking fire alarm went off! It was LOUD! Seriously, it could make someone deaf if he was exposed for an extended amount of time. Well, the firemen and cops came and everything, and made a big fuss, and it didn't look like we would be able to go back inside any time soon, so Peter and I went to the computer lab to have some fun with the internet. Finally, I went back, sat down, and was about to get into the mode again when I was once again interrupted by a phone call from James, who was with Mariann downstairs. However, this was a pleasant and welcome interruption because not only did I get to spend some time talking with them about random things, but they made COOKIES for me! Can you believe it? Yeah! So now I have this nice, big plate of cookies that I shouldn't eat because I'm getting way too fat. RARGH.

Here is a very fine insult from A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I must finish by last Tuesday (the character is referring to a short woman that he used to be in love with but isn't anymore because a magic spell has made him love another woman):

"LYSANDER: Get you gone, you dwarf,

You minimus of hind'ring knot-grass made,

You bead, you acorn."

10-23-2001

I finished A Midsummer Night's Dream this morning! I was so proud of myself. Unfortunately, the Shakespeare professor decided not to slow the schedule down a bit even though he missed a whole week of class (he lost his voice), which leaves me behind in the reading.

On the way to class I checked out Tower Records to see how much the Final Fantasy DVD, which came out today, costed; it was $25, which was 7 bucks more than it was in the Fry's ad last weekend, so I will probably just buy it over the weekend.

Over-relaxing myself after all the midterms and papers, I watched Se7en when I arrived back to Davidson. That was a great movie, and now I kind of want to buy the DVD! Must...resist...temptation to spend money...

Then I ate, went to IV small group (which I left in a hurry for soon-to-be-described reasons), and rushed to the 9:00 advance screening of K-PAX! I got to see it for absolutely FREE; it was a showing before the theatrical release, and they had free posters and surveys after the film. NEAT! Oh yeah, and the movie was really interesting too. But what I REALLY can't wait for is the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There, which is showing (also an advance screening) next Thursday! Woohoo!

10-24-2001

I sold my stocks this morning...all of them. They were slowing down, so I just got rid of 'em. Now I'll need to find something else to invest in.

I snoozed right through a lot of class. But next week some dude is coming with information on internships with Hollywood studios, where you get paid to work on stuff and let producers and people listen to your ideas (or something like that; I'm not sure)! So I'm looking forward to that!

We watched Scarface in Art Studies, which was a pretty good, heavily-80's-soaked movie with some harrowing scenes of violence and a lot of F-words. Then I went to Huai-Ming's house for PSP, but today only me and Mariann showed up, since Elliot and Leon went to some teaching seminar video thing. Hmm. But we were all so tired that we couldn't move very quickly, and it took us forever to get through just praying for Mariann and me; at least I felt better about not getting enough sleep after I found that they sleep even less: about 3-5 hours a night! Man! Afterwards, when Elliot and Leon finally came to join us, we all signed her card (as well as the misprinted default card for "Cory") and got into Huai-Ming's truck and drove to Ben & Jerry's to pick up Shirley's cake. Then we drove to her house and were trying to "surprise" her by leaving the cake (complete with lit candles) in front of the door, but she popped out and saw us. Aaaahhh! But we made her go back inside and we "surprised" her anyway. And we went inside, prayed for her, and ate cake. Mmm!

10-25-2001

This morning I woke up pretty early so I could work out at the RSF. Except the thing is, I didn't. I went to eat breakfast instead. Then I studied The Merchant of Venice and read a good bit before becoming totally bored. I decided to check on the stocks and see if anything was good. All of them went down! I was so happy that I pulled out yesterday! Of course, after a few hours, I saw them start creeping upwards until Nvidia reached a point where I would have had another 75 bucks if I had stayed with it, so I ended up buying 20 shares again, which was a total waste of $8 (actually $16 since I had to go through two transactions. I'm such a dumb butt). Well, at least they continued going up, so I made quite a few bucks that way.

We had another fire alarm today, and right before I was about to head to class! That meant I had to rush back up after the firemen confirmed it was a "false alarm" (I could've said that), snatch all my books together, and post hastily to class. I made it just in time, and I wouldn't really have missed anything anyway since the lecture was pretty boring.

In the English 173 screening today we saw a film called Black Orpheus, which wasn't bad, and was actually in color and sound! Man haven't seen one of those in class before. Then, being late for Interpraise (it comes only once a year!), I grabbed a Mango Tango Odwalla from the Golden Bear and a fat pepperoni slice from Fat Slice, I jogged to that one church on Channing and Dana, where Interpraise was being held. It was just a lot of worship with all the different fellowships together (each person on the worship team was from a different one) and this one speaker named Vinoth something from Sri Lanka. I actually conked out a few times during his "lecture." Oh well, I may actually get some good sleep tonight.