The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself
A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley
Spring 2002
Week 5: Straight Out of Thin Air
2-18-2002
I left early Saturday morning with Leon, came home, played FFX, went to cell group.
A LOT of people came back to church on Sunday: first, Vincent and Emily visited (they normally go to Victor’s church now), Victor came, Gloria was also home, and Frances. Ha ha, those Fremont people are so nuts. During the sermon, Ralph tells this joke involving the knee-deep Dead Sea, and at the end everyone is laughing and Emily (who is sitting next to me) grabs my sleeve and says “I don’t get it.” HAHAHA?!? And also during worship, out of the blue, she crashes into me and then tries to bite my arm after I look at her funny. AND all those Fremont 8th graders (yeah I know they’re not really in 8th grade) are all hanging around me and Grace is asking me if I missed Gloria, which is a variation of what she asked me the LAST time Gloria LEFT. Argh, never mind.
Sunday night was spent playing more FFX and watching the Games. I slept until 10:00 Monday morning, played some more FFX, and read about half of my assigned reading of Jane Eyre. Went to Leon’s house, ate at TGIF’s with him, Jean, Jon, and Jonny, where we talked a lot about how we all need to get girlfriends and crap. Got back to school, did the rest of the reading. I’m just too damn tired to explain anything further in detail, especially since this eye twitch is now getting worse and more violent. DAMN IT!!! I HATE THIS!!!
2-19-2002
I had originally intended to sleep a little early last night, but Jane Eyre and the Olympics kept me from doing so, and I went to sleep at 2:40. This morning I awoke at 8:30 and ate breakfast with Leon. My eyes were completely bloodshot and were still twitching, so I finished the rest of the reading I had for today and took a nap for about an hour and a half.
It rained decently today. Class was cool, I was glad that I actually did the reading (and retained most of the text since both Jane Eyre and the thing from the reader were both pretty engaging), and the Stagecraft lab was OK. There was a lot of lifting and moving and dragging around.
Oh! I got the warm-up pants and BDU pants today in the mail from Ebay! Yay!
I ate, and went to small group, where James gave a talk about worship through sharing. Then we watched the Olympics together for a while and ate a lot of junk food (it was Cathy’s birthday today so we had some GREAT cake).
I delayed the climax of my entry today. In English 100, I got my essay back. It was an A-minus! Do you know what she wrote? “One of the best essays in the seminar!” WOW! All that pulling interpretation straight out of thin air, ultra-subjective analyzing, and rich bullshitting paid off! She noted all over my essay: “good close reading!” It was hard work, but I knew I had to do it; I learned my lesson from last year. Maybe it’s happening. Maybe I’m finally getting used to the kind of writing I have to do here at Berkeley! After reading her nearly-unintelligible notes of praise, I walked around my floor with my arms in the air. AAAAAHHHH YEAH!! And the strange thing is that she marked my essay up from top to bottom with basic rhetoric comments. She pays a lot of attention to language as well as the message, which I like. We need good, skillful writers; it doesn’t all depend on just the good bullshitters. You have to be able to put your shit into proper language. See, THIS is the kind of professor I like. Teaches well, keeps me awake, grades rightly. Boy, she’s great!
Did I mention that someone took the “Pedro” sign off our door over the weekend and replaced it with Megan’s? So now it looks like Megan lives in my room. Hah.
2-20-2002
Leon and I (or at least I) worked ourselves dead sore benching and lifting weights. OWCH my upper torso was in pain for the day. I tried to take a nap before class but I couldn’t sleep.
In Stagecraft we learned about hand tools. Hand tools. I knew all that stuff. I sat next to Gloria (Kim, not Yen or Liu), and I got that quiz back from last week: 9.5 out of 10. It’s been a good week! After class I went to get an Odwalla smoothie, as I always do, and I met Gloria (Liu, not Yen or Kim) at the café, where we chatted briefly about how school is abusing us for its own purposes. Then I went down to University Ave. to pick up a copy of the Film 108 reader at Copy World; I expected it to be around 25 bucks or whatever exorbitant prices they usually choose to tear the mean from my bones with, but it turned out to be only $6.50! Who ever heard of a $6.50 reader?! Incredible! And since I was there, I stopped by Comic Relief the check out anything interesting (unfortunately, nothing was, except a nifty Ghost World screenplay).
Back in my room, I tried to nap again, and actually fell half asleep until something bonked outside in the hall and woke me up permanently. In the evening I went to Kip’s for the Coen Brothers class, in which I had a rotten seat. Not only was I far from the screen, but there were all these heads in front of me and I couldn’t see the bottom of the picture. Oh, and I was next to that damned ice machine that kept rumbling the whole time and drowned out the dialogue. The movie was Blood Simple, the Coen’s first film. The plot was pretty good.
I can’t believe Elliot assigned so much Jane Eyre reading for only two days! Two-hundred-fifty pages! Nuts, man! How the herr am I supposed to do that? Of course I didn’t finish tonight. I’ll finish tomorrow.
I finally got my printer back up and running, after messing with tons of crap and replacing the black ink cartridge. Argh.
2-21-2002
Ate this morning with Leon, Kenny, and Suzi. I then was able to nap for a very brief period of time before eating lunch and heading off to class, in which I fell asleep a few times. Stagecraft was normal; we spent a lot of time hanging up the legs and borders (those are the curtains on the sides).
I did some of the reading for tomorrow’s quiz in Film 108, but not enough. There was also PSP today. I didn’t know exactly where it was because of this whole which-Westminister-House-is-it dilemma, but fortunately Huaiming called me and notified me that it was at her house. So I sprinted over there (pant pant pant) and we (including Leon, who was already there) watched some of the ladies’ figure skating until we decided that it was time to turn the tube off and actually do some PSP-ing. We went around and shared our thoughts and feelings and all that, but before praying we checked on the status. It’s too bad we missed the Sarah Hughes performance, since it was said to be perfect, but we saw Sasha Cohen’s skating (she fell! Auuugh! It would have been so nice if she had won) and Michelle Kwan’s (she fell! AUUUGH! I can’t believe it!) and then Irina Slutskya (however you spell it) who ALSO did some shaky landings! In the end, Sarah Hughes won, which I suppose is how it should be because her routine was perfect and the others’ weren’t. Slutskya got the silver and Kwan got the bronze (what a shame!) and Cohen was bumped out of the medals to 4th place! So sad...
Then we finished up our praying, and Huaiming drove us back to unit 2. Grrf, I have to choose songs for Sunday...