The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Fall 2002

Week 15: Aimless

11-24-2002

Ben drove Shirley and me back to SJ on Saturday. Dad picked me up from their house, we went to Precision Tune to pick up the van and I went straight to worship practice. The Mandarin booted us out at 2:30 (instead of the previously slated 3:00, already an inconvenience for me in the first)! PLUS we had to clean all the equipment out! DUDE! Oh well. We just rushed through everything. I DID notice that when we all helped clean up, it went really quickly. I made a note of this.

I met with Howard after that. We watched some of Judge Dredd on TV and went to Jamba Juice. Then I went to to K-mart (the place is so disarrayed and SLOW) to buy AOTC (which was mislabeled), and then met with the rest of the family at Fresh Choice. Cell group that night was good. The discussions and everything went quite well.

Today I packed everything together and went to church. Worship practice was great, much better than yesterday. The actual set turned out really well, much better than previous weeks, and I was very pleased and thankful for it. Along the same lines, I noticed the response from the congregation was much more visible, to me, at least. And we got to do ALL of our songs (I had expected for at least one and more likely 2 songs to be cut, but for some reason Ralph decided to keep it going. I actually ADDED another song! Didn’t have the transparency for it though. The sermon was excellent, I almost cried, for real. Immediately following service I asked everyone to help clean up (remembering what happened at practice yesterday); they did, and cleanup was a snap! There was a meeting afterwards (Ben bought me something from Carl’s Jr. to make my discomfort in my tight dress pants even more unbearable. I got all excited about calling people and seeing how they are doing. We totally need to do more of that. I left early for the concert.

I arrived at the temple in SF extremely late, and with an upset stomach. I thought I could handle it. The first Hebrew song was OK, but sort of aimless. Then we had to sit through a really long thing from the women’s stuff. There was a brief intermission following, and I rushed to the bathroom and took a heavy crap. When I came out, they were all gone! I rushed to the stage and got there just as they were all getting on, and I pushed my way through the risers to my spot. Good thing I think Marika wasn’t in the hall at the time. The song went well but my feet got so tired (we had no chairs) and my music kept slipping.

As soon as that was over we drove to Berkeley and I went to the apartment. Ben was still here. We watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights (or whatever chunk of it was still remaining on TV), and then Hook (see note for previous film). Then I looked over Howard’s personal statement for the UC apps and also IMed some people to get started on what I was talking about today at the meeting. I talked to Steve, Vicki, Howard, and Jon Liao. Exciting!

11-25-2002

This morning I woke up, ate, went to class. I found out more about the final. It sounds like we may have to write short answer questions that have to do with all the books we read, not just the two since the last midterm. Ruh oh. My retention is pretty bad...

I ate a salad for lunch. Then I “started” on my Film 151 paper that’s due on Dec. 5^th. I hadn’t really written anything down so I watched Ally McBeal with Shirley. Then some other stuff (I did not have sectionals today) and she went to rehearsal. I made a can of clam chowder and ate it. Leon came back. I really started outlining my paper, though I haven’t done any research at all yet (that will come later... I think). At 7:00 I went to the screening of Ride With the Devil, which was OK but not as good as Ang Lee’s other movies.

I came back and actually wrote some of my introduction for my paper. At least I have a head start on this dumb thing! I IMed Eugenia to see how she was doing. I also chatted a bit with Eric about his personal statement, and Howard. Once in a while I would watch a little bit of the supplementary materials on the AOTC DVD, which I have not watched yet. Grr. Maybe tomorrow, after small group?

11-26-2002

Last night I had an epiphany. All three verses (minus the final line of the third) for my new song came to me almost at once when I looked over the passage in Zephaniah again. Hallelujah! Of course it kept me from my paper, and I also stayed up really late. I am going to bed later and later these days.

For some reason I woke up early today. I got a lot of work done: I did the reading for today’s Film 151 class, I read some stuff from the book for English 135AC, I emptied lots of trash and vacuumed the floors. Whee!

I went to class and it was OK. Then I came back, took a brief nap (probably like 10 minutes... Leon as sleeping in his bed and I didn’t even know he was there. Victor called his cell later and I picked it up and said he wasn’t there, and then Shirley said he was sleeping, and I was like “huh???”) and watched some of Meet Joe Black on TV because Shirley said it was a great movie and all. At 4:00 I went to chorus, which wasn’t too hard today.

I made chicken again, and I just get better and better at it. Mmm. This time I added some mustard and barbeque sauce. When people came to small group they could smell it.

Small group was good; we had super small groups today (3 instead of 2). It was good. Afterwards Ryan was going to watch Die Another Day and asked who wanted to go. Wayne, Koheun, Clarissa and I went. I had wanted to watch AOTC today, but once again, spontaneity decided to throw my evening off. We got the 10:00 show (good thing I got the $7.00 student discount, otherwise I would have had to pay the outrageous 9 freakin’ bucks... 7 dollars is a lot already). It wasn’t a bad movie, and had lots of neat stuff in it. By the time I got back home it was almost 1:00.