The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Week Twelve: Sleep and Forget

11-12-2001

I took the BART home with Shirley on Saturday. Wow, that train ride is a lot more fun and fast when you're actually there's somebody with you with whom to talk. We actually managed to talk about a lot of things in 50 minutes, and somehow in the middle of it all she somehow found a way to make me promise her that I would watch 10 Things I Hate About You. Hmm.

After that I went home, fussed quickly over music sheets and stuff, and went to worship practice (this time we had a full team!) and now I almost know how to halfway set up the stage! Anyway, for some reason, the practice didn't come off quite like I had expected, even though technically I didn't really notice any problems; I just felt weird. Maybe it is because I had never worked with so many people before. Or maybe it was something else...

On the way home I stopped by Fry's to pick up Empire of the Sun on DVD! I can't wait to watch it! And it was raining too! YES!!!

Cell group was cool, Jonny, Ben, and Eric paid us a visit, but I was REALLY tired.

Sunday's worship practice in the morning also left me feeling strange; however, the actual worship session turned out fine and was really great, even though I made some glaring, horrific mistakes that even a musically inept fungus could have discerned. I am just not leading well enough. The rest of the team is going off into a different part of the song than I am (this happened at LEAST three times that day) and fuddles everything up for a good ten seconds (which is a LOT) and it's all my fault. MAN.

After church a bunch of us went to see The One, which was kind of lame but had neat-o special effects and fights. That night I did TONS of work on my animation, then on Monday morning I had a LOT of trouble putting it back onto a CD (I finally got it to work in the final minutes before I had to leave) and went to Ben's house. He was taking Shirley and I to Berkeley on the way to Davis. It was a nice ride; we got to drive in the rain, and besides, it's just fun being with them for some reason. Back in my room, I worked some more on my animation and watched the rest of Frequency, which is REALLY good.

11-13-2001

I spent all morning working on the animation, went to Shakespeare class and ignored the instructor, then went back and worked on the animation all afternoon, ate, skipped IV small group, and worked on the animation all night. And it's FINISHED! THANK GOD! I spent exactly one week on it for a final product that lasts for one minute and 34 seconds. If I don't get an A++ on this, I'm going to be HERRA MAD!!! I drew all the pictures, scanned them all into those stupid Macs downstairs, IMed them to Leon and Gloria, had them IM it back to me upstairs in my room, cut the scans into separate frames, converted bitmaps to GIFs, put them on CD to work on them at home, messed with them at the last minute to put them BACK onto a CD to take them BACK to school, colored the frames, arranged them, made them into animated GIFs and from there into HALFWAY decent .avi files (that took FOREVER), made TONS of sound effects and music, got five girls to say some lines for the voices, synched ALL the sound with the video via long and repetitive trial-and-error process, converted the sound to different bitrates, joined the .avi video file with the .wav sound file into one .mpg, and attached the animation .mpg to the end credits .mpg (which I also had to create), and by gum, I'm going to EAT the bread!!! And then there's a freakin' essay I have to write about it too! All by tomorrow! ARGH!!!

11-14-2001

Finished the paper today, and handed it in with my aniamtion! Whew! At last, it's over with! On the flip side of that, I got a C on my Film 25A midterm... grr. I went to class, which wasn't as boring as usual because I actually made an effort at paying attention, and also we finally watched some ENTERTAINING movies by Buster Keaton. I wanted to talk with the instructor about my consistently bad grades, so I went back to Davidson, got all my papers, shot analyses, and exams, and after spending a good bit of time doing random things, went back to wait in line for some office-hour time with the instructor, but by the time it was my turn, it was time for me to go to my mobster film class, so I just dropped my stuff off with her so she could look at it (she told me that my 75 on the midterm wasn't bad at all, even though it is) and I told her I would talk with her on Monday. Then I went to the Art Studies class and we saw Snatch, which was pretty good but I was unable to understand all the British and Irish accents (especially from Brad Pitt) and I was surprised at how little screen time Benicio Del Toro got. Anyway, after that I went to Huai-Ming's for PSP (Leon and Mariann ditched... as USUAL); I was STARVING afterwards so I went to Gypsy's and ordered the same thing that I got when Shirley treated me to lunch: BRONX TALE! Mmm good but salty and now I'm really thirsty.

I am mad that the DVD player on my computer is messing up and I can't watch Empire of the Sun. I read a lot of Watchmen tonight; it is a pretty interesting comic book and I need to read it by Monday, when the professor will give away the ending. MAN not enough sleep... my eyes hurt and I have headaches and neck-aches all the time now...

11-15-2001

I am forgetting to write more and more; many times now I have to turn the computer back on because I turned it off, forgetting to write a daily entry in this journal. My entries have also been getting shorter. At least I've been consistent for this whole semester, which is almost over. I read a lot of Watchmen in the morning (I should have worked out today... last week was the first week so that I've been here so far that I didn't go to the RSF). I got my midterm back in Shakespeare class today... it was SO bad... 18 points out of 30. That test was a freaking low blow, so cheap, so tricky. I don't see how anyone could score well on it, but I guess some did. Maybe it's my short-term memory problems. Or maybe I'm just stupid and retarded and don't belong in this damned place. I could have wiped my ass with the freakin' blue book and probably have gotten a better score; after all, it IS all shit. I was REALLY mad this afternoon for being such an idiot and for having such conniving and low-down professors.

I won't explain the English 173 screening that I had tonight because I don't really care about it at all right now. I came back, ate a lot of unhealthy food, watched Being John Malkovich (possibly the only bright part of the day; it is really interesting and has some neat puppetry and visual effects), and read the rest of Watchmen, which took quite a while. Peter went out to some bars with his old roommate and friends from last semester; he's still out there and it's past 2:00 right now. There's so many things going on! Final paper for Film 25A (which will be a C if I follow my current trend in that area), final exam for Shakespeare 117A (which will be a D if I follow my current trend in that area) and Phase II of Tele-BEARS (which I will skip if I follow the my current trend in that area). I want to sleep and forget all this college nonsense.