The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2002

Week One: Super Boring Crap

1-21-2002

Wow, I had a great break. Maybe it's because I didn't have school.

You want to know what I did over the break? Well, here goes...

The day after I left Berkeley I watched The Fellowship of the Ring with Jonny, Gloria, Ben, Steve, and someone else that I can't remember. We sat in the row in the very back but it was still a good seat (oh yeah, Stephen Kua. But there was still one other person that I'm forgetting) and it was a great movie with lots of fighting and special effects. Totally worth the ticket.

Let's see, what else? The co-workers retreat was a lot of fun, AND in fact, we got more actual church business done than I had anticipated. It was a really nice house with a lot of rooms, and a nice kitchen, and a jacuzzi. I was upstairs, in a room with Tim, Elliot, and Leon. Zeke decided to join us and slept on the floor. The bathroom lock did not work, which was a bother. We skied at Heavenly, which wasn't an entirely pleasant experience because it was both cold and VERY wet, and it was snowing; all those negative factors exhausted us fairly quickly, especially all the first-time snowboarders who gave up at noon. SIGH. Another ten bite the dust. It snowed so much that eventually they had to close down the terrain park (the best part of the resort) due to "limited visibility." At the end of the day the only new snowboarders left were Ben and Vicki, who both did very well. At nights, in the house, Leedah and I whooped all competition in endless games of Peanut Butter.

Driving back from Heavenly posed a small problem since loads of fresh snow were falling and the snow shoveling trucks weren't around. I had an annoying time putting chains onto the MPV, and my hands were bone cold, but eventually I got them hooked on (with Wendy and Wayne's help). On the way back, we found the big van that Ralph was driving which had left quite a while ago, and it was stuck on the side of the road. Their chains had fallen off, so they had stopped to check it out, and another car tried to drive around it and hit another car. A big fuss ensued. Anyway, we got back on our way and went back to the house.

The drive home was fun. We listened to The Beatles and other fun music.

Hmm, what else happened? Oh yeah, the Christmas play! Despite botched practices and a large volume of slacking, we managed to pull it off, and did a pretty good while we were at it. The problem with the Mandarin congregation is that they laugh at all the wrong times (i.e., the parts that aren't actually funny) and so they miss all the good lines while they're laughing. Oh well. It was fun and stuff, and it was a good cast.

I also saw The Lord of the Rings again, this time with my family. It was still great.

OK I can't really remember too much else. On Saturday, Grant held a LAN party at his house. Tim and I brought all our computer stuff and we set them up in his dining room. As a special reward for arriving early, Grant gave the first 12 people these great shirts that he made just for the LAN party! We played Counter-Strike all day, mostly it was people in the study room (Dave, Grant, Leedah, Andrew) against everybody else: Ben, Steve (the babysitter Steve), John Kua, Leon, Howard, Thomas. Other people also joined throughout the day: Troy, Zeke, Joon, a lot of people were there. It was a lot of fun; we should do that more often. Much of the time, Dave was doing most of the owning, but there were some significant periods of time where I achieved maximum ownage.

Yesterday, Teen Challenge came to our church. They talked and sang some songs. Also, Pastor Batbold was there; he came to the USA all the way from Ulaanbaatar! I didn't get a chance to talk to him, though, since I had to leave.

In the evening, Dad, Tim, and I went to watch Black Hawk Down, which was pretty good but not as good as, say, The Lord of the Rings or another comparable movie, like Saving Private Ryan. This past year, my top movie list would be:

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2. The Fellowship of the Ring

3. Ghost World

4. The Man Who Wasn't There

5. Black Hawk Down

If you have wisdom, you will watch those movies. I guess the other movies I saw this year are pretty good too, like Memento, and even Final Fantasy and The Mummy Returns.

After the movie, I ate some food, packed the rest of my stuff, and headed off to Berkeley again to start a new freakin' semester. I got here and realized that I forgot a towel. Shoot. Always bring a towel. Douglas Adams was right.

Peter got a laptop! Wow! He bought it from his friend for 500 bucks, and it's pretty good too.

OH YEAH! Highlight of the break! I BOUGHT A PLAYSTATION 2! From eBay! And I got FINAL FANTASY X! YAHOOO!

Peter watched Antz on his new DVD drive and I watched some of Trainspotting, and then I saw Shrek.

1-22-2002

The first day of school. How depressing. I had to wake up super early (7:45) so I could go eat with Leon and get to my 8:30 class. The neat thing about this semester is that Leon and I have pretty much the exact same schedules, so we can go work out together.

My first class was English 110: Medieval Lives, and it was BORING. I really can't stand this stuff. The professor kept speaking with big words, abnormal sentence structures, and annoying "intellectual" phrases to sound smart; she was just trying to sound confusing enough that a duller-than-usual (a.k.a. Berkeley) student would think she was saying something clever, instead of thinking she was simply using long-winded yabber to cover up the fact that her ideas were abstract, unsupported, and made absolutely no sense. She even made up words sometimes, and assumed that we would think we, as stupid college students, had too small a vocabulary to know that the word didn't even exist. That's Berkeley for you.

Next, I went to the English 166, a study on Hitchcock, in which I was really far back on the wait list. Not surprisingly, they allowed more people to enroll than the room would contain, so people that were on the list had to be kicked out. I don't understand how this supposedly "good" school can harbor such brainless incompetence. On the flip side, I'm not exactly disappointed that I didn't get in; a lot of the people in the class (including the professor) were just a little too gay for my tastes; that skinny gay red-headed dude was there again, and the professor had these gay zippers all over his sweater. Dude, what's wrong with this place?

So I went to my English 112 class: Middle English Literature. Hooray. Again, super boring crap. When that nightmare was over, I went to my last class of the day, English 100, my junior seminar. It is on "early and mid-Victorian representations," which sounds ultra-boring but it actually was the most interesting of classes, and the professor actually seems like an almost normal person who will grade on a semi-fair basis. She has a slight British accent because she grew up in Britain.

Some of the students were so mind-numbingly incapable. She asked a few people to read a paragraph from a handout, and some of these Berkeley students, whom I ASSUME were in the top of their high school classes, couldn't even read words like "travail" and "incarnate" "indestructible." Such literal (pun thoughtfully intended) stupidity. It's like I'm surrounded by fourth graders, but for some reason my grades are CRAPPY and theirs AREN'T (at least I think they aren't)! I don't get it, really! What the herr am I doing wrong?

If I get into Film 108 on Friday, I think I'm going to drop one of those boring classes.

I went to the bookstore and wrote down all the ISBN numbers for my required books. Seeing the monstrous line at the checkout, I decided not to buy any books just yet, which will increase my reading load tomorrow since I have to read the entire A Christmas Carol for English 100 by Thursday. Shoot.

Just to remind myself of how good an actor Edward Norton is, I began watching the beginning of American History X, and I was so caught up with it that I saw the entire movie. Man, what a great movie. Actually, I hadn't seen the whole thing before because I came late to the class in which we watched the second half, back at San Jose City College. I was delayed that day because I was trying to buy a PS2. It's been over a year since then, but now I have one, finally!

At dinner, I ate with Leon, and then we went to small group, where we just chilled, ate cake (for Aileen's birthday), and played a few rounds of Mafia. Sigh. Amateurs. They just couldn't handle a Mafia veteran like me.

So much free time, what without my books and all, has made me a movie magnet. I came back and watched The Game, a cool David Fincher movie that obviously has some signs of his signature style of filmmaking being developed (they will later become really clear in movies like Fight Club, where he has a bigger budget and better special effects). Don't worry, very soon (tomorrow, in fact), I won't have any time for fun stuff. Peter tried watching Final Fantasy but it didn't work in his DVD-ROM.

I searched a bunch of sites for my books, but nothing special, price-wise at least.

Tomorrow's another busy day. Leon and I are going to the RSF to get buff! Yeehah!

1-23-2002

Woke up this morning, ate some breakfast, and then went to the RSF with Leon. We did all upper-body workout today until our muscles were dead sore. That was fun. Afterwards we went to the ASUC bookstore, where I picked up a couple of books for English 100 to eat lunch.

I went to the Zellerbach Playhouse for my Dramatic Arts 60 (Stagecraft) class. I didn't know where the entrance was, and some girl asked me if I was in the Stagecraft class. She also was in the class, and was looking for the entrance as well; all the doors were locked. Finally we found a door and got inside, slightly late. The girl's name was Tammy, and she was a 2^nd year student from Lyndbrook.

The whole of the class was spent on telling us all the required stuff we would have to do during the semester. Much work is required from the lab portion of the course! It sounds like a lot of work, but also fun, and there's no reading, which is a BIG plus. On the way back I went to Copy Central to get the English 100 reader, but the line was disgustingly long, so I didn't get it. For the rest of the afternoon, I read some of A Christmas Carol (which must be finished by tomorrow), until dinner time, at which time I went to eat with Peter and Leon. After that, I went back to my room to read more, and then went to junior small group with Leon, which was fun. There was some worship and games. We walked home with Suzy (or Susie? A new transfer student from Bakersfield; NOT the Suzy down the hall), and I finished the book.

Professor Justice, from last semester, replied to my email and said that he would not change the grade; however, he would look it over to see if he had made any errors correcting it. DAMN. The grade I have now is going to seriously mar my GPA.

Cindy told me that we could practice in the B building on Saturday afternoon! YES! AND, Jonny told me that I am leading the worship for the combined cell group with Bill Baldwin! How exciting! Which reminds me of one other thing I did over the break: I was on the New Year's Eve worship team, with Steve leading. It was one of the most strenuous things I ever did; I basically played keyboard for over 10 hours straight. WHOMP what an experience.

1-24-2002

One of the things I hate most is having to get up early in the mornings, and I hate it even more when the reason for doing so is school. Interestingly, Leon, Suzy (Susie?) and I all have classes at 9:30 in the morning, so we all ate together. I brushed my teeth and all that, and the walked to my first class with Metty. It was so freaking boring that I fell asleep again. Why can't it be more interesting?

Middle English was a lot more intriguing; all the funky spelling and poems are enjoyable to read, at least. Last, but not least, I went to the junior seminar class, which was probably the most fun, since we got to discuss A Christmas Carol, and talk about all these strange Victorian topics.

Although I can't explain it, time seems to run so fast now. It seems as if all I did for the rest of the day was figure out tabs for worship this weekend, and take care of other various errands (it's a good thing I don't have too much work to do). I also watched the remaining bit of Trainspotting that I didn't finish last time, and I proofread and printed a couple of my stories to submit tomorrow for some contests. Tomorrow I should also be going to the RSF in the morning, and then to the bookstore. Instead of pining away about not know whether or not I'm going to drop a particular class or not, I'm just going to buy a few of the books that I need now, and if I drop, then I will return them. That way I can at least do SOME reading over the weekend. Actually I won't anyway because Saturday is basically packed and Sunday I'll want to play some Final Fantasy X. Oh well. It's only the beginning of the semester anyway.

Oh yeah, I need to add to that Film 108 (The Musical) class tomorrow...

1-25-2002

This is great! Leon and I can work out all the time now! Our upper body muscles were still incredibly sore from the hard-core workout on Wednesday, so this time we worked our back and lower body muscles, and we also did ten minutes on the rowing machines. Whoo!

We went to the campus bookstore and I bought some books, then we went to Ned's, where Leon bought his books and I found that they had MY books, but in better condition. I would have returned my old ones and bought them from Ned's instead, but I didn't want to go through the trouble, so I just let it be.

I submitted my stories to the Prize office in Sproul Hall. The lady there told me that I had a good chance with my Irving Prize (for American Wit and Humor) submission because there were very few applicants; actually, I checked the web site, and last year, there were no submissions at all. Heh heh, that means I have a good shot at getting the prize, as well as some much-needed dough.

I went to the Film 108 class (The Musical) with professor Fabe from last semester's Film 25A, and it looks like I have a good chance of getting bumped up from the waiting list into the course. Today was a pretty fun class, and it looks to be a good course for the semester. She just showed us some clips from various musicals such as The Music Man, musical episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Simpsons, and the South Park movie.

Finally! The first week of school, OVER! I've been hearing various people telling me that Nelson is an awful professor and that I shouldn't take his course. Maybe I should follow their advice. Except I also want to drop this BORING class that I'm taking with some other boring, smart-ass professor. So what should I do? I need a pre-1800 class for English, so I'm going to have to take it sooner or later. Man, what am I going to do?

I spent some of the afternoon printing out all the tabs that I need for tomorrow. I'm still not done picking songs yet...

Before dinner, James dropped by to give me a new chess set! Neat! I ate dinner with Peter and Leon, then went to InterVarsity, the first meeting this semester. It was pretty cool; the worship was good. Wheeler was showing Training Day at 9:30, and I wanted to go, but no one else wanted to. All those girly girls would rather see those girly movies like Serendipity or Monsters, Inc. or something like that. I asked Shirley, Mariann, Stephanie, Hung-Tzu; nobody wanted to, and Suzi (that's how you spell it, I found out today) saw it already. Leon was concerned that he would have to "walk back" to Unit 2 with people. Sigh. It was a good movie.

Still have to figure out more songs for tomorrow. I shaved for the first time in a long while (just haven't gotten around to it) and managed to lock myself out. Unbelievable. I took the key off my loop, set it down, and made a blatant, mental note to not leave the room until I had picked it up. Seconds later, I left. My memory is getting SO bad, it's starting to scare me. I mean, I forgot my freaking TOWEL at home. A TOWEL.

Speaking of home, I'm going there tomorrow. It's rather disappointing because I have a crap-load of work to do already (although none of it's due until Tuesday. Well, most of it), Saturday is going to be packed because I have worship practice at 3:00 until the combined cell, and I can't really get home much earlier before that because my parents can't get me from the BART in Fremont until 12:40! So my Saturday is pretty much shot, AND I have to do some reading on Sunday, and then come back to school. Won't even have a spare hour to play some FFX! What is this world coming to?

1-26-2002

I'm all packed and ready to go home. I chose a couple more songs. Things are lookin' all right. I'm going to take BART to Fremont with Leon, but I need to put money on my BART ticket first. Dad and Mom are always going to that prayer meeting on Saturday mornings so they can't pick me up from Fremont until 12:40! I barely get to be home at all! If I had a freakin' car, this wouldn't even be an issue. Man. And I can't believe Shirley and Ben aren't coming back. Plus Tim has a rehearsal for orchestra later so he can't play on the combined cell worship. Argh. Oh well, I'm leaving. At least I'm going home.