The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Week Fourteen: Rats

11-25-2001

Back at school, after a blissfully unproductive weekend. I took the BART home on Wednesday night (and had to stand up for a long time because these black dudes with boom-boxes were hogging all the seats to themselves and were throwing trash all over the place, and people kept taking the next available seats). But at least I got home.

Thursday was a pretty inactive day until we went to one of ZCOP's (Zion Church of Praise) cell groups, where they were having some Thanksgiving potluck thingy. I didn't really want to go, but we got to eat some good food. Those little kids were really bad, and hypocritical too because they prayed all fervent-like out loud but did the exact opposite things two seconds later. This is exactly what I observed in the youth at the ZCOP retreat last year; those little kids grow up to be bad youth. But I shouldn't be judgmental...

On Friday, Tim and I went store-jumping to catch all the good deals that they had before 12 noon. First we went to CompUSA but we found that they didn't open at 7 AM like the rest of the stores, so we went to Circuit City and bought that portable CD player for ten bucks! Then we went to Staples for some RAM, but they were crowded beyond belief (due to the after-Thanksgiving holiday shopping rush by the tech-junkie geezers that don't know anything about computers), so we went back to CompUSA, which would open soon, and hustled in (along with the other maniac freaks) right when they opened the door. I went straight for the RAM while Tim nabbed some CD-R's. After that we stopped by Big 5 to get a couple of really nice, fleece sleeping bags, for ten bucks each! Then we went home.

After resting for a bit, Dad decided to go look for another snowboard, even though none of us needed one. Sportmart was all out, so we went to Best Buy to check out the really good deals they had; unfortunately, the line was REALLY long, so we didn't get anything. But Dad went to the Sportmart THERE and got a snowboard.

Zip zip fast forward to FOOD! We ate our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday afternoon instead of Thursday night. Mmm. I ate all this unhealthy stuff. Oh well.

Afterwards, at night, I went to college cell, which I hadn't visited for a while. It was mostly eating junk food and watching Zeke play Counter-Strike, but even still, we got to have some semblance of fellowship, and besides, it was cool to hang out with a bunch of college peers for an evening. Gloria came home! We stole her keys and Elliot and I put them into her car. HEH. Cell ended early so I went to Fremont's cell group to visit them. Grace sat in my car to learn some helpful driving tips from me (under the guise of "making sure I didn't get lost"). That cell was cool too; they had just had some Thanksgiving potluck too, which was evident from the ragged turkey remains lying around. I got to see Jen and April too; it's been a while since I saw them. Then I went home after the meeting ended (and after dealing with Gloria and Jen who kept trying to keep me from going).

On Saturday, the whole family went out to Heart Castle to take a little tour. However, after hours of boring, strenuous driving, we discovered that not only were the tickets $14 APIECE, but they were sold out! What a waste of time! So we scooted a little further south to San Luis Obispo and walked around on the beach for about 5 minutes. There wasn't much else we did but scope out a few campgrounds for prospective future use. It wasn't the most exciting way to spend a weekend but we still got to spend time together and eat more junk and fast food. Heh. And when we came home, we rented Planet of the Apes, but for a number of reasons we didn't start until very late, and we ended at about 12:30 AM.

I arrived at church on Sunday morning at 7:15 because I thought that Pastor Ralph's email meant 7:30 in the MORNING. It turns out he meant at NIGHT. ARGH. Anyway, we had a meeting about the voting for the 7-Up building, and everyone wanted to vote for the same thing except for me, as usual.

Pastor Liu spoke about the prayer of Jabez in the sermon. Later, we all went to eat out for Jonny and Tony's birthday. For some reason, we ended up at some expensive Mexican restaurant called El Toritos (though no one really wanted to go there) and the waiters didn't like us (I'm guessing out retarded scene-making turned them off) and they kept trying to make us order that $13 buffet, so eventually we FORGOT THAT and decided to go to some noodle joint instead. Some of us had already ordered (including me), so the people that ordered buffet stuck around and I gave my order to Kimmy. So we ditched 'em and headed for our home base, California Noodle House.

We ate there and talked about Playstation 2 and other things. Then a few people decided to go to Tony's house and go minigolfing. At first I wasn't going to but Tim really wanted to and also I felt bad for just leaving him at El Toritos (he was one of the people who already ordered), so we went. Minigolofing was fun; I got the best score (55). I went home, packed, ate, got a botched hair-cut from mom (I'm going to wear a hat for the rest of the week now) and Dad took me to church to vote. In the end, the English congregation only got 2 votes instead of 5 (1 per cell group) because supposedly most of our congregation were under 18 and therefore were not eligible to be represented by voting. So now it was just me and Grant. I don't know what he chose, but my vote was insignificant either way because it was passed by a vote of 41 yes to 13 no (with 1 abstaining from voting). Well, that's that. Grant took me to Leon's house, and I came back here, at school again, only to discover that I brought the CD case for the CD with Into Your Presence We Come but I left the actual disc in the stereo at home. Doh!

11-27-2001

Aahh! I didn't write yesterday, I forgot again! I am really doing hard work now; no time for movies or games any more. Yesterday I spent all night doing my final paper for Film 25A and reading some of As You Like It (which I didn't finish at all). At around 10:00 at night James came over to play some chess. He whooped be bad in the first game, but the second game was closer; I took out almost all of his guys and he took out all of mine except the King.

Today I read some more of that Shakespeare play. In class, I tried to follow the same note-taking procedure that I did last time, but I simply dozed off many times since I only slept five and a half hours last night. It's just getting worse and worse. I'm behind by two plays in the Shakespeare class, and I completely gave up keeping track of how many articles from the reader behind I am in the Film 25A and English 173 classes; I haven't even done a single bit of reading from the readers for weeks. Add that to the final paper for the film class, due next Monday, and I'm screwed.

On the darkly brighter side, I talked with professor Justice after class today in his office and got some invaluable advice from him about how to take the final. He told me that he had the exact same problem when he entered college. My problem is I take pieces from the text or whatever and use that to support my thesis, but what I need to do is take those pieces, INTERPRET them, and then use THOSE to support my thesis. It seems that no on ever learns this in high school or junior college. The difference between me and a high schooler getting the same grade is that he is only a freshman with 3 more years to go while I am already in junior standing and I can't afford an extra semester or two to adjust to the style here. Rats. If I had just talked to him sooner (like in the beginning of the semester), perhaps then I wouldn't have the crappy-ass grades that I have now. RATS.

Small group was cool; I learned more than usual (maybe because we studied Isaiah. I like that book; it's my favorite from the whole Bible). Sigh... more studying to do. RATS.

11-28-2001

Woke up, ate, read As You Like It, and watched helplessly as my stocks in Nvidia plummet like rocks in the water until I ate and went to class. In English 173 the professor talked about Alien, which we will be seeing tomorrow at the screening. He asked how many people haven't seen it, and so many people raised their hands, I was shocked! I sci-fi horror classic, and all these Gen-Xers should be even more likely to have seen it than I am. Oh well, at least I'll get to see them scream for their mommies tomorrow (the professor said it was the first time since he was a kid that he screamed out loud in a movie... haha). We actually got to watch a sound film today in Film 25A; it was His Girl Friday and it was pretty good, pretty funny.

I came back momentarily to drop my backpack off so I wouldn't have to carry it around, and then left for the Art Studies decal. Half a minute after I left the building, it started raining; I didn't want to go back to get my trench coat because I didn't want to be late, so I walked in the rain ALL THE WAY to Tolman, only to find that there was no class! So I walked ALL THE WAY home, thankful that I didn't use my last swipe on an Odwalla smoothie or something. Instead, I ate at the DC with Peter, and Leon, who later joined us, and I ate a TON of food (two pieces of barbequed chicken, 3 pieces of fish fillet in tartar sauce, two servings of giant french fries, a salad, and two ice cream cones, to be exact). Oh yeah, I finally finished that As You Like It play today! Whew, that's a load off my back. Now I have to catch up on 2 Henry IV and Henry V (I think those are the ones).

I haven't even goofed around at all this week; there's just no time. This morning I watched about 11 minutes of Office Space, but that was about it. I wrote a LOT of my Film 25A final paper today. Man, I hope it turns out all right because I desperately need good grades. Finals are approaching fast and I don't like it one bit...

11-29-2001

Nothing really interesting today. I did a little reading of Julius Caesar in the morning, and I also wrote out a bunch of tabs for the songs I'm going to do on Sunday. Shakespeare class was normal. Afterwards, though, I went to Comic Relief, a comic book store on University Avenue, and I found a couple of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graphic novels that I was looking for online. The condition wasn't that great (they were used), but what can you expect; they went out of print a long time ago and are hard to come by these days. The ones that I am REALLY looking for are Books II and III, but I only found Book IV, and the first episode reprint. I bought them both. They said that a new series is coming out pretty soon, from Peter Laird and some other dudes. I also tried to find the Bodycount one by Kevin Eastman, but I didn't find it.

At the English 173 screening, we watched Alien and I got to see all those poor fools who hadn't seen it jump in their seats at all the moments when I knew they would. It is actually really scary; even MY heart was pounding at some scenes, and I've seen it before at least twice. I came back just before the DC closed and happened to find Leon there. I ate a TON of food, like I did yesterday, and now I'm going to get fat. RATS. That lady gave me too many of those fried catfish things even though I only asked for a little.

I wrote some more of my paper, which is coming along all right, and watched the rest of Office Space, which I thought was pretty good. I might get some sleep today, who knows?

11-30-2001

If I had just bought InVision stocks yesterday, I could have make a freakin' fortune! NUTS!

English 173 discussion was interesting today because we got to talk about Alien, and we discussed a lot of neat things. Then I spent the afternoon unproductively; I can't even remember what I was doing. I know that I watched Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels, which I liked. I went to IV and this guy talked for a really long time. I left right after he finished so I could catch the showing of Ghost World at Wheeler. As I expected, there was almost NOBODY there, simply because there wasn't anyone like Brad Pitt or Nicole Kidman or Kevin Spacey, etc. etc., in the film, but it was an AMAZING movie and I really liked it a lot; it made me think, and portrayed a convincing and poignant look at the coming of age of some girl. It was also a very good satire.

I happened to run into my fellow English major Suzy while walking back since she had watched the movie as well. So I walked with her and talked about English and other fun things like that.