The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Fall 2002

Week 14: Fret Appropriately

11-17-2002

Woke up this morning at 9:15 to get ready to go to church. Wayne called and said it started at 9:30, not 10:30 as we had been informed earlier. Whoops. We all scrunched into Wendy’s Subaru and carted off to Great Commission church. We were late. The message by Pastor Joseph was excellent, I was really moved by it. He was talking about how we need to focus on seeing God, not on the size of the church, or the quality of the sound equipment, etc. I think that sometimes our church gets caught up too much in that sort of thing, with our fancy new building and all. Sigh. And they had really awesome snacks, not like our ghetto chicken and stuff: they had muffins, chips, salsa, cashews, pastries (not bottom of the bucket donuts like we have), chocolate covered raisins, the whole bit. But Ben (Christina’s cousin) said that they normally don’t have snacks that good. It was combined service for them today.

After the service, we drove to the prospective new building. It is extremely nice, in an extremely nice location, with an extremely nice price (well, 3 million isn’t exactly NICE, but it’s brand new, and for the size and location and all, it’s a good deal). Then we went to eat with some of the co-workers at this Asian plaza sort of thing that totally made me feel like I was in China. There was stationery shops, restaurants, Asian music stores, strange wall colors and decor, a Ranch 99, and the structure of the place just looked like Asia. I felt so good there. I think I was meant to be a native born Chinese, but I’m trapped in a Chinese-illiterate ABC’s body. Help!

That was fun, we went back to our apartment and right away met up with people to go shopping with small group at Target for Operation Christmas Child. That was fun. We got a bunch of toys. I bought some Mentos for the kick of it and shared them with people. Then we came back, dropped off the goods at our place, and went to eat at Unit 1 DC (Julia and Jason swiped us in that didn’t have meal plans). Mmm, DC food! Brought back memories (good and bad). I totally gorged myself (all you can eat, man!) and the food wasn’t bad, but when I got back to the apartment, I could feel the pain coming back from my dormitory days. The DC food is just so low quality, it simply doesn’t go down right. My stomach hurt and felt bloated. Leon went to go study with them at the main stacks and I stayed here to write my paper. Shirley had already gone back to SJ for the evening to watch The Fellowship of the Ring on some high-end entertainment system with some friends or something. YARGH.

Tina came over for a while to transfer her architecture photos to computer and then burn them to CD. It took a while because we didn’t know how to do it and kept fiddling around with the camera and programs.

Well she left, and I started working again. Once again, it took me hours just to get down a few sentences, but after that I started getting back into it again. Leon came back. I was on a roll. Shirley came back. I was almost done. I decided “what the herr, I need a frickin’ break” so I played Max Payne for longer than I should have. Now it’s 3:08, and I have one paragraph left to write, then the conclusion. I’m almost there dude!

4:03 am: FINISHED! Boo ya! Too bad I didn’t get a chance to see a movie today. Maybe tomorrow. I’m out dude, bed time. My legs are SORE (beats me why).

11-18-2002

I woke up three hours after I went to bed, at 7:30, in case Leon wanted to go to morning prayer, but we didn’t. I went back to sleep and conked the herr out until almost 10:30 this morning. I quickly put myself together (by the way, my lower right leg cramped while I was sleeping and caused me much suffering), hastily proofread and printed my paper, and went to class. It’s over! Next paper I have is due on December 5, which gives me at least a couple of weeks of breathing room.

After class I came back, messed around, ate, played (and beat!) Max Payne, and did a massive cleaning frenzy. I cleaned the kitchen (floors included), emptied trash, and even washed out that towel that’s been getting all gross. I finished just in time to haul all the cans and bottles over to a bin on campus on the way to sectionals, which ended early. Hooray!

I played Counter-Strike with Ben for a while. Leon made some chili/beef/potatoes. At 7:00 I went to the screening of Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, which is a good, but demented, movie. The cast is really good.

I came back, hung around, maybe did a little bit of reading. Jesse came over to work on CS with Leon. After a while all four of us played some Uno!!! It was so fun. Leon won, and Shirley got second. The remaining two of us gave up after that. Jesse took quite a number of hits and had a sizeable chunk of the deck in his hand.

Oh yeah, my clothes from Gap came in today! They’re REALLY nice! Name brand stuff really IS better! And I got a steal on all of them too.

11-19-2002

I awoke this morning at the hefty time of 10:20. I went to bed last night at about 2:45 (to watch the meteor shower and all) but I kind of stayed half awake til 3:30.

No Film 151 today! I took the grand opportunity and made like a rabbit to Safeway. It was a long walk, longer than I remembered. I bought a whole bunch of stuff and figured I could carry it, and I did carry it for a few blocks, thinking that I would just be tired but I could live with it. Soon I found that I wouldn’t be able to make it. So I stumbled to the next bus stop and took that back to the apartment. Whew.

I prepared my chicken for tonight, cleaned, cooked, ate, did reading, etc., until chorus, which was tiring, but OK. I came back, cooked my chicken and some soup and was just about to eat it when Victor came over. He was going to lead worship at small group tonight because it was supposed to be extended but Leon had a lot of stuff to do. I ate my food with him. My chicken was really good but not cooked enough. I microwaved it a little but it was still pretty raw when I ate it. At the time it seemed fine, sort of fleshy and not stringy like it should be, but now I realize that it was in fact pretty darn raw. I hope I don’t get salmonella or anything.

Small group was good, we had worship and then wrapped and packed all our boxes. I wrapped mine but it was pretty runty since it was one of those flap boxes and was tricky to get paper around. I made a nice card though. Afterward a couple of people went to study, but I didn’t really want to go anywhere. I did reading here, though, and got quite a bit done before I started falling asleep on the couch. I took a short Counter-Strike break to calm my nerves. I will go to bed now.

11-20-2002

I woke up, ate, did devotions, and went to class (I went to the bank on the way). When class got out I walked through Sproul and I saw Leon’s environmental education group making those recycled notebook things, so I stopped by to make one for myself. That was fun.

I came home and played a little bit of CS, doing quite well, and then I read for English 135AC, a practice I had long given up but have started to pick up again this week. At 3:00 I went to vocal technique. When that was over I came back and started building my own level for Max Payne. It was kind of tricky but I started to figure things out.

James came by and took Leon and I out to eat. We got takeout from this nice steak house called Emil Villa’s or something. We got 2 slabs of pork ribs with 4 sides for 35 bucks altogether. That’s a pretty good deal since all three of us were really hungry and ate til we were really full. At first I thought we would finish ‘em, and we would all kind of want the last rib, but try to make each other eat it out of courtesy, but when we finally reached that point, we were all too full and really did not want it at all. Or at least I didn’t. I was stuffed. Plus there was a bit of side dishes left over. They were all really good. We saved it for Shirley.

I spent a lot of the evening working on the Max Payne level again. I am starting to get the hang of it, but I’m having trouble making objects. I’m not sure if I can just past objects into it, or if I have to make each plane from scratch like I have to do with the rooms. That’s crazy. That, and I have to set jump points and all this other wild stuff that is super complicated. Ugh it’s so hard. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do this.

I did some more reading and started falling asleep again. That happened this afternoon. Nowadays, every time I read I fall asleep. But my retention is a lot better, for some reason. Maybe it’s because the book I’m reading now (Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington) is pretty good and sort of interesting. But then wouldn’t that keep me from falling asleep?

Today my shoulders and upper back/lower neck were really sore from lifting all those groceries yesterday.

I wonder when I should get started on my research paper for Film 151. That’s the only thing I’m worried about right now; the English 115B stuff is basically I giant crock of shite and the English 135AC final exam is sort of an issue for me, but I can’t really start fretting about it until I ask him what it’s going to be like, so then I can fret appropriately.

11-21-2002

I woke up today, ate, did reading and stuff. I don’t know what I did up until 2:00 (I defrosted chicken but that’s about all I remember; I didn’t goof off though), which is when I went to English 115B, which I expected to be a waste of time, as usual. It was. Thankfully, I brought some of my English 135AC reading with me and got a lot done. Even so, I fell asleep. I came home briefly to prepare the chicken, then went to chorus. That was OK. I came back after that, fried my chicken again (this time it was much more successful than Tuesday’s) along with some bell peppers. Quite good. Then I watched a little TV with Shirley and practiced some of my worship (the songs for which I still have not chosen). Victor came over and hung out for a while. He left at 10:00 and I went to play wiffle ball at Underhill parking lot with some IV freshmen and stuff. Justin and Erina were there, and Phil. That was fun. My team won 6-4. I got 3 or 4 hits, including one pop fly.

I spent a lot of time today sorting out worship scheduling and stuff. I spent a lot of this night trying to find words for my song. Hmm. Very, very tricky.

11-22-2002

I woke up today and went to kickboxing with Shirley, as usual. It wasn’t that bad today, but pretty tiring. I think the tempo was a little faster than normal. I skipped class.

I make tuna “casserole” for lunch; it was just pasta with tuna, miracle whip, some salt, pepper, and dressing thrown in, but it was pretty good. I watched Monsters, Inc., which turned out to be excellent! Normally I don’t trust Disney even as far as I can thrown them (which isn’t far at all), but this one was just as good as Toy Story. Then again, it’s all thanks to Pixar; Disney didn’t really do anything except slap their name on Pixar’s film and collect all the profits, the bastards. The movie DID, however, have all the usual Disney elements (cute characters, incredibly unrealistic and sappy endings, etc.) but it was really funny so I guess that partially made up for it.

At 4:00 I went to Dr. “Dino”’s lecture at Dwinelle about creation science. Actually it was more of a tearing down of the lies of evolution that is taught in textbooks. Many of the stuff they teach are things that were proven false or hoaxes decades, or even centuries ago, and yet they still feature them in modern day textbooks. A lot of the stuff he was talking about, the exact thing turned up in a random biology book that he took from a Berkeley student as an example. WE ARE BEING DELIBERATELY LIED TO. I was so mad after the lecture. The “science” of evolutionists is such bullshit it makes me sick. The sheer unprofessionalism and lack of an unbiased objectivity in their work is beyond fathomable belief. They drop all evidence that discredits their theories and only mention things that support them. And they tell our kids that it’s fact, and use slimy tactics in the textbooks to get the reader to buy the ideas. DAMN THEM!

Today was the last official large group of the semester. Boy that was fast. Afterwards our small group people went to go eat. Most of us got some takeout stuff from Steve’s Korean BBQ place, and we took it to Julia’s NICE suite to eat it. We hung out there til about midnight, and we went home and I practiced and picked songs. I have to print them out, pack for tomorrow (psych for the concert!), and all this stuff. Papers due, plus my workshop next week for combined cell, plus the Christmas play... argh. Ben bought us tickets for The Two Towers, opening day. w00t!