The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2002

Week 6: No Circulation

2-24-2002

I didn’t feel that good on Friday morning; my throat was kind of messy and I was extremely tired, so I decided not to go play basketball with the fellows from IV. Instead, I ate breakfast and slept. Then I did some reading (just enough to take the quiz that took place that day), ate lunch, and went to class, where I miraculously did not fall asleep, or even grow drowsy. Class ended, and I went back to Davidson, packed, printed all the music tabs for the weekend’s worship set, ate, lugged all my junk down to the BART and took it to Fremont. On the train, I got some reading of Jane Eyre done (I finished the assigned reading that was supposed to be finished the day before).

At home we all watched the heavily-edited-for-television broadcast of Primal Fear, a great movie. I then got tons of sleep.

On Saturday morning I played quite a good bit of FFX, up until the point at which you fight Seymour for the 3^rd time. At 2:00, Tim and I went to our worship practice with the rest of our team, sans Shirley, Ben, Tiffany, Jon Hwong, and Andrew. Oh well, at least we had a fun time doing a shameless mutilation of Holy and Anointed One. Meanwhile, my voice continued to degrade in a declining downgrade due to my extended period of running through the cold night to Huaiming’s house on Thursday.

Cell group was pretty good; entertaining for the most part, decent attendance and fairly good attention paid to the leaders.

This morning during practice I had to eject two songs because of my destructive screeching. I almost lost all hope because my voice was just plain horrible. Fortunately, either because I managed to peal out a decent enough voice or because John Kua smothered my voice track with effects, the set came out all right and in fact the whole thing sounded pretty good! Oh, and Jonny preached.

Afterwards we went home and ate Papa Murphy’s. Then we went to some Zion thingy, but I slept in the car because my eyes were disgustingly bloodshot to the point of hideousness. When it was over we ate at the Ranch 99 in Milpitas Square, then they dropped me off directly to Leon’s house, where I watched some of a video about goalies while his family ate dinner. Jean drove us to Berkeley, where I watched the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and helped Danny, my new, Greenpeace, free-thinker roommate move in. On one hand, he has some similar likes (Radiohead and The Beatles) and dislikes (rowdy roommates) as me; on the other hand, this whole “girl situation” thing that we’re inevitably going to have to set up may be a pain in the keister. I also read more of Jane Eyre.

2-25-2002

My scratchy throat was gone; instead, an annoying cough and a running, stuffy nose settled in. Nevertheless, I went to work out this morning with Leon. At the DC, I had an omelette for the first time. It was good.

I took a short nap and went to class, which was cancelled. So I came back to my room and did some various stuff until 3:00, when I went to the PFA to watch Dames, a messed up, extravagant musical with mind-boggling choreography by perverted drill sergeant Busby Berkeley and psychotic spectacle. Following the movie, we were treated to a extended smattering of arrogant, smart-ass bullshit by a bunch of dirty old men who view the screenings just so they can get their kicks listening to pornographic interpretations of 1930's musicals. After class, I ate at the DC, where there was pie.

Danny wrapped up his moving in and interior redecorating of his side of the room. I got quite a lot of Jane Eyre read; enough so that I probably can do the assigned reading by tomorrow. My nose is getting really runny now. Argh.

2-26-2002

I ate with Leon and Aileen at breakfast, then came back to my room, finished the rest of the assigned reading for Jane Eyre, then I took a nap, ate with Meti and friends (arguing with her about the disgusting picture she placed on her door), and then went to class. I let the elevator close before Meti could get to it on the way down and she said “I’m going to kill you, Jon!” which leaves me quite frightened.

My illness is no better; I have a super annoying running, stuffy nose. So in class I was sniffling and snorting the whole damn time and it was all hot and sweaty and I felt horrible.

At the Stagecraft lab, I had the same problem, but luckily there was no serious work to do because the Divine Comedy set was essentially finished. We did a little cleaning up, moving some flats here and there, but the majority of the time was spent with Brian teaching us how to tie all these different knots. That passed by surprisingly quickly. I went to eat dinner with Pablo and Igor.

Small group was OK, but I fell asleep because I was so dead. Gruuu... Even after I came back I didn’t really get that much reading done. I need to go to sleep and get over this sickness. OH! On the happy side: MY EYE TWITCH IS DISAPPEARING! I just hope it doesn’t come back.

2-27-2002

Morpheus is down! Auuugh! Anyway, I worked out with Leon this morning, and then we ate with Lydia. I took a nap and then went to Stagecraft. It’s strange how lately I’ve been taking naps nearly every day instead of watching movies; I didn’t watch a single movie (in my room) for all of last week, and all of this week so far! However, the extra hours of sleep don’t seem to be helping my eyes get any less bloodshot, but my eye WAS recovering from its twitch yesterday, until today, when it started acting up again. It’s not quite as bad as it was before though, so that’s good.

After class I opened the window and the door, and the air was so cool! I finally figured out why opening the window never cools down the room. No circulation! The air from outside can’t even come in! But when I open the door, air can flow in one way and out the other, making the room fresh and cool. Ahh...

At the Coen Brothers class we watched Raising Arizona, which was a neat movie with lots of dynamic tracking camera antics. It was also pretty funny and was totally weird (in fact, the tagline for the film is “A comedy beyond belief”). I was grateful that the main smartass bullshitter in the class was absent today, however this one guy that thinks he knows everything about the Coens and always mentions sly connections and stuff like he’s so smart was still there, and he kind of got on my nerves.

The DC closes at 7:30, but I made it back in time to eat. Aileen was there so I ate with her. We stayed until after they closed, so one of the staff was taking in all the ice cream and pie. But I wanted pie! So I said “Hey, can I get some pie?” And she was going to give me some, but we were having a hard time finding something to scoop it with and into, so she said “Do you want more?” I said “Sure” so she gave me the whole dang pie! Whee! Aileen took a slice, but I got to take the rest out (this other staff dude gave me a funny eye, but I knew I was on the right side of the law this time!).

Back in my room, I somehow got into another long, politics/beliefs discussion/debate, this time with Danny instead of Peter, although it uncannily resembled my previous conversation with Peter. It involved laws, murder, abortion, and all those other kinds of things. I was surprised that a fairly liberal fellow like him supported spanking kids, and he was also pretty agreeing with my proposal to introduce harsh caning as a form of corporal punishment into the United States. Dude! I can’t believe it! This guy has done time! That’s right, he’s been incarcerated! Man, I feel insecure now... what did he get in for? I’m afraid to ask... but it couldn’t have been anything like violent, could it? He’s a skinny white dude...

2-28-2002

As usual, I ate with Leon. Except I didn’t, because he didn’t wake up, so I ate by myself. It turns out he didn’t even go to class; he just slept. I ate with Meti, Leslie, her sister Shannon, and this other girl on our floor whose name I don’t know (*slaps myself*). Anyway, I went to class and all that stuff, and then to the Stagecraft lab, where we tracked dirt in to some newly painted platforms so they would match with the already dirtified ones. We also moved some flats around and sorted out random things... very easy work since there was not a thing left to do with the Dante set.

Nothing else particularly special about today; I ate dinner, studied some, installed and played Escape from Monkey Island (I haven’t played ANY games at school, it was such a relief to start again). I also had a long chat with Gerald regarding Oscar snubs, Black Hawk Down, and other movie-related things. I don’t know if I’m going to play basketball tomorrow. I don’t want to get up.

Shane put something on his door. It is some sort of response to that nasty spectacle that Meti has on her door. I already expected it to be something so I didn’t have to get up close to know what it is... YUCK. What is wrong with our floor?!?

My sickness is getting better, and a good thing too because I have somehow already been officially enrolled in the airsoft game this Saturday.

Two more words that are frequently used in college by professors, texts, etc., to sound smart: “notion” and “intrinsic.” Wow, your vocabulary is so high just because you can “notion” instead of base words like “idea.” Sheesh. Arrogant fools.

My eye twitch was pretty bad today, and as for the bloodshot-ness of my eyes, it is getting AWFUL. There is almost more red now in my eyes than white; all the viens are popping straight out of the surface of my eyeball and it is just gross. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.