The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Fall 2002

Week 11: Writer’s Block

10-27-2002

OK, this weekend has been so busy it’s not even funny. Friday morning: kickboxing, hard ab work, extremely sore, esp. after lifting day before. Class. Stuff. Instead of watching movies like usual on Fridays, I work on paper, get nothing done. Rehearsal at 7:30-9. Goes well. Walk to BART, go home.

Saturday morning. Worship practice. One person is late, other doesn’t come at all. Went home, hung out for a while (watched Kenshin), drove BACK to Berkeley, went to chorus concert, which went pretty well (all these doofy guys were carrying walkmans with them to check on the Giants game. LAME), afterwards drove BACK to SJ, stopped at church to talk with people left from combined cell and got leftover snacks. Went home, slept late.

This morning. Woke up at 6, went to D-5 meeting. Worship practice before service, goes well. Actual worship service, a bit messier, but OK. Friends Day. Jason does a fantastic testimony that really made my day. Special songs go OK. Ate with Wayne at BK afterward while Tim attends cell leader meeting. Go home, do stuff, take BART back to Berkeley and walk to apt. Waste time playing with the new rat that Leon got. I’m calling her Pokey because that’s what she is. Paper does not get any work done on it though I sit before it blankly for hours. Finally, at around 1am, after much food (I eat when I’m anxious; I ate a sandwich, a potato, and egg...) things start clicking. I write a good bit, nearly two pages complete, but only a day left to go. Damn. It’s 3:15am, and I’m EXTREMELY tired. New IMAP client on Troy’s Newtomorrow server, which has been moved and is SUPER fast. It works, and is sweet.

I have to pick and apply for senior seminar by Tuesday, which is also when my paper is due. CRAP!

10-29-2002

I woke up early today, maybe because of the recent time change. But I slept at like 3:15 yesterday. Oh well. I had to work on my paper. I skipped class to have more time on it. I essential spent the entire day sitting at my computer, writing, and eating food. And playing with the rat, she was distracting me quite a bit. I didn’t accomplish much. Writer’s block.

But I guess gradually it came along. By about 5:00 I had 2 pages completed. I was stuck again. So I went to Safeway with Shirley and got some bananas, yogurt, bell peppers, and Miracle Whip (finally! Hooray! AND it was buy one get one free!!!). It’s quite a walk.

I ate some Chunky Soup (mmm) and had WAY too much sodium for the day... a full can of chili, a full can of Chunky Soup, a ham sandwich, and PBJ sandwich, a yogurt bar, some beef jerky, bowl of cereal, a bowl of oatmeal... I ate everything today. I’m like a big eating machine.

I went to the screening of Eat Drink Man Woman, another great Ang Lee movie. It was so cool because you get shock after shock as all this crazy stuff happens to this one family. It’s a very funny movie. Oh yeah, and I watched carefully when the guy gave me my movie ticket... he didn’t check the names or anything; therefore, no attendance record, so my absence last week probably went by unnoticed. Heh.

Came back, ate salad, and other stuff. Paper is ALMOST THERE! I also chose my senior seminar class to apply to: the Mark Twain seminar. Not only do I think he’s cool, but on the way back from Safeway I randomly spotted this building called Mark Twain Condominiums. Now how often do you see something like that. A sign! Radical!

The new server is SO awesome. It’s SUPER fast, and IMAP is the rockingest thing ever. Troy is one spiffy dude.

I am so incredibly tired. I’ve been half dozing off at random times today. What a mess.

10-29-2002

I did it! Last night I finished the paper AND the seminar app, all by 2:00! w00t! I got some good sleep because I slept today until almost 11 (or was it 10, I’m not sure; anyway, it was a lot of sleep compared to usual). I woke up and added the final touches on the paper. It’s not a very good paper. But I’ve worked harder on it than anything else this semester, so it’s good enough for me (for the professor is a different story).

I went to class, where he expected us to do the reading the NIGHT BEFORE our papers were due. Yeah, right. I worked on the crossword instead, but it was pretty tricky. He let us out early, realizing that we obviously had not done the reading. So I went to Wheeler and handed in the application. It’s all taken care of! So many things in my mind were laid to rest today. It was such a nice day today... sunny and cool. It reminded me almost of the midwest.

English 115B was boring, especially since I couldn’t get much done on the crossword.

No rehearsal today! I kicked back and relaxed, mostly watching TV. My auction game came in today! It’s called Aqua Aqua.

Small group was REALLY good today. Probably the best one so far. I really like small group a lot. We were supposed to talk about suggestions and stuff today; I suggested we go bowling sometime, but there’s really not a thing I have to complain about. It’s great.

Afterwards they went to go study, as usual, and I stayed here, made some pasta (mmm) and watched Glengarry Glen Ross, which was good, but kind of boring in the second half; I expected it to be better since it was David Mamet and everything, and it was based on his Pulitzer Prize winning play. Maybe the play is better to watch.

Then I tried Aqua Aqua out for a spin. At first I was like “this is weird and hard” but it quickly grew on my and became fast-paced and fun. Time went by pretty quickly. I can still see the dropping blocks now as I type.

My head is reeling a little bit, I need to sleep. My skin is also getting drier. Argh.

10-30-2002

I’ve just been waking up early these past few days. Today I got up, ate, etc. Went to class, which was boring as usual. Then I came back and did some relaxing, Aqua Aqua, Ally McBeal, and reading until vocal technique, which was really fun! Since we didn’t do much practicing or anything; we were working on this new thing called “We Sing and Chant It” (I think that’s the name) and it was cool to sing all the different parts together.

After that was over, I came back, did more reading and Aqua Aqua. I got a huge package today. Ling Ling sent me cookies all the way from Chicago! Last week I was whining to everyone about all my woes and worries and she said (on IM, of course) “I’ll make you some cookies” and I said “Ha ha, OK,” and she did! A whole bunch of chocolate chip cookies that were really good. Boy that really made my day.

In the evening Jesse came over to work on a CS project with Leon. Tina came over for a while to look at the pictures she took of her drawings. She can draw REALLY well! It’s amazing. I’m embarrassed about my own art now. I will draw something tonight. For dinner I fried some potatoes (ahhhh they were so good) and my special bell peppers. I read quite a bit from The Awakening, which is crap. I had an altogether wonderful day. The weather was great, I had a good time, I got work done, played some games, talked a lot with people... a great day.

10-31-2002

You know it’s amazing how I can write about five pages every week (single spaced) for this journal, but it will take me two to three weeks to get even one infernal page written for one of my essays. Only when the day of terror is upon me, with hours left before the due date, am I able to truly accomplish anything. How retarded is that.

OK so this morning I woke up and pretty soon Shirley was talking of pizzas and all this good food so we decided to order pizza. Boy was it good pizza. I did an assortment of reading, Aqua Aqua, and later, I watched about a third of Red Planet, until 2:00, when I foolishly went to English 115B (oh yeah, there was no Film 151 today). I say “foolishly” because it turned out to be enormously boring and pointless. I despise attending that circus of a class. At least I got a lot of the crossword done. After that I went back to the apartment briefly, then went to chorus, which was fun! I haven’t really had fun in rehearsals for quite while because of my fatigue, but maybe it was just me being rather happy this week. We started singing new stuff, I sat next to Min again after a couple weeks since Marika moved us around for the performance (if I haven’t mentioned Min before, he’s the guy who sits next to me in chorus), and we joked a lot; that was fun.

I came back again, did random stuff like eat salad. I finished Red Planet, which was decent. I was going to watch Sleeper today but I don’t want to bother Shirley because she has a midterm tomorrow and cannot afford to be distracted.

Leon has been gone almost the whole day. I don’t know how that man does it. Oh yeah, I found a photography class! It’s in the visual arts department. The only thing is, it’s 4 units (that’s a lot for a photography class, I think) and it’s 9-12, which is not only early, but LONG. I don’t know if that sounds too hot. I’ll probably end up just taking a sociology class since Shirley can tell me all the good professors and everything. I am just sick and tired of all the English and Film bullshit, you know?

11-1-2002

I went to kickboxing this morning. Shirley didn’t go, I assume because of her midterm. There wasn’t a lot of people today, and I was the only guy there.

I went to class and finished a lot of the crossword. Then I came back, made some chili and stuff, hung out. Watched My Neighbor Totoro, which was a great, fun, adorable movie with lots of cool stuff in it. At 4:00 we went to meet with Unit 2 people to watch Jonah: A Veggietales Movie, but it was not showing at Shattuck Cinemas anymore. So we drove all the way to Pleasant Hill to watch it at the Century theatre there. It was funny because Emily passed by us while we were waiting on the street and she couldn’t go because she was going to drop some stuff off at the post office. I was in Tina’s car (not the small group Tina) and we were supposed to drop the car off and go with another guy but then she ended up picking up this guy Dave Lai from Foothill, which took up a lot of time. So we were droving back to College Ave., and I KNEW we were going to run into Emily while she was walking back. And we DID! So we picked her up and we went to Pleasant Hill, and got into the movie a little late. But it was a pretty good movie; what I was expecting. And we got the matinee discount, $5.50, which isn’t bad at all!

After that, the people from our car went to Quizno’s. I’d never been there before. I got this turkey thing with honey dijon mustard and cranberry sauce. Ahhh...

We got to large group late. It was a pretty good meeting. Afterward we discovered a mass of events that were happening after: capture the flag, going to the movies, softball, etc. Julia and Koh Eun wanted me to go watch The Ring with them; I wanted to but I already saw a movie today. I also kind of wanted to play CTF, and I also wanted to just go home. But we decided on CTF at Memorial Glade (Koh Eun went home) and they split us into Senior/Freshmen vs. Sophomores/Juniors. So Julia and Clarissa were on my team and Emily was on the other team. They beat us the first game, it was short and nothing really happened. I was in jail most of the time (but only because I dropped my sunglasses). The next game was really long; I got a lot of sneaking around done, around the Doe Library. There was one particular time when I was ducking down these steps (hiding really well behind the pillars and everything) and this guy spotted me, I think. I dove behind a pillar but Javier and Grace (who were spectating) were like “RUN, JON, RUN!!!” So I took a hint and jumped out and bolted for the steps, and sure enough, the guy had seen me and was right on my heels. I’m so serious. I careened up those stairs like a madman, probably the most adrenaline I’ve had in a long time. I took the steps at least five at a time, which is more than most people can do, so as soon as I hit the top I shook him and made it back alive. WHEW! We won that game.

After that we all headed to Sweetheart Café and I got the Kiwi Slushy w/Pearl drink. The special has been the same for a month or something. Then all the Unit 2/CKC people walked back. Wayne came to our apartment and he, Leon and I played Aqua Aqua for a while. After he left, Leon and I played and loser did 20 push ups. Heh heh.