The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself
A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley
Spring 2002
Week 9: Victory!
3-17-2002
I skipped class on Friday to go home early so I could make it to the outreach. Before I went to church, I stopped by Fry’s and picked up some CD-Rs, and a few DVDs: The Patriot and two copies of Planet of the Apes. At first I had intended to sell all of them, but I checked Ebay and they can’t really go for that much more, so I don’t know what to do. I suppose I could just sell them anyway and boost my seller rating. Dad said we could keep The Patriot anyway since it was only 8 bucks and is really a good movie after all. We might keep one of the Planet of the Apes DVDs also, just because it’s a really cool DVD and it was only 10 bucks.
So about the outreach. Everyone got into a van and Ralph drove it (Jonny took his Mercedes SUV and took Marie, Wayne, and Steve Yang; the car seemed just a LITTLE bit out of place when we drove to the San Francisco ghetto areas). It was a rather small group, much smaller than last year’s. I sat in the front seat of the van and talked with Ralph the whole time about movies and stuff. Before we got to YWAM’s base, we stopped at a McDonald’s, a place where I never thought I’d ever enter voluntarily again. I didn’t order anything but Ralph ordered two Big Macs since they had some special for two of em for $2.22, so I got one of his. He also ordered me an ice cream cone, and when I started eating it, licking off the sides, suddenly a swarm of ancient, long-forgotten memories flooded back to me. I then remembered all the joyous times that our family had in younger days, getting 25-cent cones at McD’s in Minnesota, and sculpting faces out of them. So I began carving amusing faces into my ice cream and it was a total blast. For some reason, though, every one else thought I was completely nuts. Heh, Tiffany (not the pastor’s daughter, but Preston’s sister) got a HAPPY MEAL, even though she’s like 16 or something and a junior in high school. This, of course, left her open and subject to continual mockery and teasing (especially by me, and I can’t believe why no one ever appreciates my insults even though some of them, I must admit, are amazingly clever).
Perhaps I should get on to the actual outreach. We had a bunch of fleece jackes, thermos bottles of hot chocolate, and boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We split into groups of about four and covered different sections of the area; the other church that came to YWAM went to the male prostitute and gay fruity district, which made me sort of glad that all we had to do was go to other section that was mostly composed of just normal homeless people. Ralph, Amy, and Joie were in my group. I was posted with the position of doughnut-box-holder. Most of the people already knew about YWAM, making it a lot easier on us and making us feel less uncomfortable with talking and sharing with them. We spent most of our allotted time (one hour) talking with these dudes; I was amazed by how content this one guy was: he told me he was blessed, since he was still alive an everything, and he had a lot of interesting things to say (being in a state of piss-drunkenness notwithstanding) when he was hopping around aimlessly on his bike. After that we talked to this one lady name Sabrina who was in a wheelchair and the first year anniversary of her mother’s death was just coming up. She seemed to have a lot of pain and stuff, so we talked to her for quite a bit as well.
Well, it was only one hour, as opposed to last year’s MANY hours, so there really wasn’t that much we could do. We wrapped everything up, shared a little with each other and the YWAM staff, and drove back to church. I gave Joie a ride home, and then went home myself for a decent night’s rest.
On Saturday I took Tim to his CM thing (this time it was a performance test and not a written one) at San Jose State University. While I was waiting, I purposed to go to Guitar Center to check out the Yamaha P80 and P200 keyboards. I ended up driving in large circles, getting lost and making a general ass of myself until I found the freakin’ place, which wasn’t all that far from SJSU in the first place. As a result of all my wasted time, I got to spend only about 10 minutes with the keyboards. I played with them a little, but couldn’t get a good feel of either one. I DO know that the P200 has built in speakers that sound nice, whereas the P80 has to be hooked up to an amp, and the only that it was connected to at Guitar Center made it sound really muddy and weird. I need more evaluation time for them.
Tim finished, and I played FFX for much of the remaining day.
Cell group was surprisingly good, for three reasons: first, a lot of people were on time (but this was only because Wayne drove all of them), second, everybody paid attention and didn’t mess around at all (this was because Wayne finally put is foot down very strongly (I was pleased with this), and finally, a lot of people had many good things to say and Wayne purposefully didn’t talk to force the rest of the group to discuss things themselves. Dad came home that night, and told us the REAL story about his family, and all the false/changed information that we’ve been fed all these decades. Someday he should make a book and I should make a movie about all this. He also found out later that night that his father passed away...
Today I taught the baptism class instead of Jonny, who was leading worship. The class consisted of Christina Sun, Stephen Liu, this guy named David, and this other guy and this other girl, both of whose names I am ashamed to not remember. The less on went pretty well (and long) and I covered everything that I wanted to.
The service was also quite good; Ralph’s sermons are really great nowadays. Mom and Dad came to church later and we ate at Fresh Choice, where we saw Tony and his family. Dad went to translate at Zion, and the rest of us went home. I played some MGS2 and beat the first boss (!), played some more until I died, and then played more FFX. I am close to the end of that game. Simon came over to practice violin with Tim since they both have the same audition tomorrow. I went to Leon’s house at around 7:30 and played some game on his new Visor PDA, then Jean drove us back to school, where I’ve been avoiding my reading since.
3-18-2002
Leon didn’t even awaken when I called him, so we once again skipped working out at the gym. It couldn’t have happened at a better time, though, since I needed to catch up severely on my Great Expectations reading. I got a very large chunk of it done before I went to eat brunch.
Stagecraft lab was normal. I came back to my room, did some stuff, and went to the PFA to watch the 1972 film Cabaret in Film 108. It was a good film, from an artistic and filmmaking point of view, but it was so amoral and scandalous that I really didn’t enjoy it that much (people say Moulin Rouge is scandalous? Give me a break). I have to admit that some of the scenes in the film were absolutely brilliant, such as that number with the Nazi boys singing in the garden. But I just hated all the characters (especially Liza Minnelli’s character) for being so selfish, slutty, and retarded. Whatever, it definitely didn’t deserve 8 Oscars. I could have taken the great scenes in the film and made a great MOVIE out of them instead of some decadent nonsense.
Afterwards, I ate with Igor, Pablo, the guy who’s running for the school senate whose name I forgot, some girl on my floor whose name I STILL don’t know (she always wears track pants and a white t-shirt), and a couple more people whose names I also don’t know. Anyway, that senate guy (a “moderate” Republican, meaning he was for abortion and all that half-assed stuff) actually convinced Pablo, a die-hard liberal, to vote for him! He has phenomenal speaking skills. After they all left and I was still eating, Jessica and Molly (at last, I know their names!) sat down in their place. I ate an ice cream cone and left.
Today I did some reading, and not only reading, but GOOD reading. I covered a lot of material (though not nearly enough) and retained at least 60% of the information. Of course, I am still revoltingly behind on my reading and have a quiz in English 100 on Thursday. Again, I spent at least 45 minutes talking with Danny about liberals and conservatives, and our X-Men arcade situation.
Concerning the political jibing Danny and I exchanged: what I don’t understand is why there are so many rightist organizations and groups that are bent on bringing the left down using unethical and illegal tactics, while there are never any reports about any leftist groups doing anything. Conservatives are always the bad guys who participate in shady activities to bring down the left, while liberals are lily-white, pure, and innocent. It doesn’t make any sense because the government is so fully infiltrated by liberals that I don’t see how there could NOT be any liberal factions doing the same kind of thing towards the right. The FBI, CIA, Clientele-pro, whatever... I’m sure the liberals do the same exact thing, except the schools don’t tell you about those because THERE ARE THEM. The schools, media, all those people are basically working for the left, badmouthing conservatives and hailing liberals as the supreme perfect ideal. What a bunch of bullshit.
Why can’t I ever finish my reading? I really want to watch some movies; I feel deprived of any meaning and upliftment when I don’t, and I haven’t for some weeks now. Tomorrow is basically shot after 12:30 since I have small group and Hall Ass, and Wednesday is no better... looks like that quiz is screwed from the start.
3-19-2002
Leon answered the phone, but didn’t get up, so I went to eat by myself this morning. I then read some more of Great Expectations, but mostly spent time thinking about and writing my paper topic for English 100. I ate lunch with Meti and Shaila, then went to class, which was all right. The Stagecraft lab was extremely laid back since most of the stage was simple and already set up. I laid down some tape markings on the ground, and then we just sat around and talked about the Oscars and movies for a long time until Val came down and told us to go fetch some colored plastic sheets for the lights. We did that, and finished. We’re halfway through the semester, and I have exactly half of my needed hours, but I did some calculating and I will be many hours short at the end of the semester due to spring break and other annoying little things. Shoot, that means I need to extra hours on Wednesdays and stuff. Drat.
I ate dinner with Tim. Small group was really good today; the topic for the coming weeks is “gender reconciliation” (snicker) and today’s specific subject of discussion was “women” (snicker). It turns out that I knew as much about females as I thought I did, which was a lot. I also found that I knew absolutely nothing about them as well. If that doesn’t make any sense, it’s OK; neither do women. What I want to know is: DO you or do you NOT want me to open the freakin’ door for you?! SHOULD or SHOULDN’T I compliment you on things like how you look or your new haircut?! SHEESH why must you be so difficult?
Anyway, at the end (which was a whole lot later than usual because of our enthusiastic discussion) they had a carrot cake for me! Whee! Thanks!
I ran back to Davidson to vote for our X-Men arcade proposal. Danny gave a rousing recapitulation of the situation, and we were supported by a number of people who gave unscripted, honest voices about the “legacy” an X-Men arcade would leave behind. However, the treasurer and the president were adamant in trying to bring our movement down! Unbelievable! The treasurer was all like “just letting you know, we’ll be eating out of our social fund” or something, and as for the president of Hall Ass, she counted all the “abstain” votes as votes against (they NEVER ask for “abstain” votes. How blatantly anti-X-men and stupid). But we WON! VICTORY!
To celebrate, I drew wrote some neat stuff on our little board next to our door, and watched Titan A.E. with Danny, though he said he didn’t want to watch any movies. Pablo supplied popcorn and popped in occasionally. I then blew the rest of the night away drawing a silly picture to put on our door.
3-20-2002
Leon was still awake when I called him this morning, writing a paper! So we didn’t work out today. I suppose that’s all right for these current weeks since there’s been all these midterms and papers and everything. I ate a quick lunch with him and Lydia, though, and then went to Stagecraft class. I stayed behind afterwards to get in some more hours in the lab, since I have quite a bit of ground to catch up on; I think pretty much every Wednesday from here on until the end of the semester will need to be spent in the shop. Rats, that means less time for me. But it was cool, I got to work with some new people and stuff.
I went straight to LeVal’s after that for the screening of The Hudsucker Proxy. Unfortunately, the facilities there are really crappy; the audio is very low and you can hear all the noise from the bar. For the first half of the film I could barely hear a thing the characters were saying, so it was a good thing that I had already seen the film. People who hadn’t really must have missed out. Then for some reason the audio became slightly more audible during the last half an hour or so. At any rate the movie ended, and I went to the DC to eat.
I sat down with Meti, Shaila, and Jay, but the first two promptly ditched me; however I was soon joined by Pablo, Carly, and Danny, whom we spent a great deal of time making fun of. I FINALLY got to know her at least in SOME respects; I’ve been down the hall from her since the beginning of the fall and I haven’t spoken a word to her until today. What’s wrong with me?!
I spent some of the evening studying Great Expectations off of Sparknotes.com, since I calculated that it would take me 12 hours to finish reading the rest of the actual book. At around 10:50 we had floor pictures taken in the 5th floor study lounge. Aggravated by my retarded-looking hair, I tried to position my head so as not to emphasize the dorkiness of it, but I’m sure it will still turn out lame nevertheless.
Again, I wasted time and drew a comic about halogen lights in the halls, and Danny posted it on our door, against my wishes. I don’t want to make Farnaz mad because she really is a cool RA.
Even more ridiculously, I wasted more time playing a long-needed chunk of Counter-strike! What a blast; it was great! I couldn’t believe Danny never played it before. I also installed Grim Fandango, and played that as well.
Strangely, it is difficult for me to realize that I am not 18 years old. Maybe it’s because it was the first birthday I had away from home. In fact, yesterday I repeatedly forgot that it was my birthday, and was reminded only when I glanced at calendars or when Mom called me. Oh and Jonny, Christina, and Helen all instant messaged me telling me “happy birthday,” which was really nice. Oh yeah, and then Christina IMed me again this morning from school and told me that Jessica (her friend from school that also is starting to attend our church now) wanted to tell me “happy birthday” too. Farnaz also knew it was my birthday, and so did all the small group people. So I guess I’m pretty happy that so many people remembered. But it’s still so abstract to me... 19 years old! Shiver.
It’s getting extremely late. This is so dumb. What am I doing?
3-21-2002
I slept in this morning, so I couldn’t eat breakfast. Recently my routine with eating and working out with Leon seems to have been failing. That may possibly have to do with us both going to sleep at insane hours of the night, therefore resulting in a situation in which we are not able to wake up early enough the next morning.
Never mind that, though. I finished the rest of my “studying” off of Sparknotes.com, ate, and went to class to take the quiz. When I received it, I was happy to see that five questions were multiple choice, all of which I answered easily. I was not happy, however, to see the next four questions, which were “fill in the blanks” questions: one of which I knew, one of which I guessed (correctly), and two of which I left blank. Kamilla Elliot (that’s her full name, I just discovered today) said that she made them on purpose so we couldn’t just read study guides and ace the quiz.
Stagecraft breezed by nicely for a change. We spent the whole time doing work (i.e., no periods of idleness) but it didn’t drag on for me.
I ate with Shaila, Kody, and some other people. Then I went to IV (which was on Thursday this week, due to spring break and also because we were joining with some other fellowships). It was pretty cool. I came back pretty late, but we still watched Memento, and Danny thought it was the best movie ever. I just noticed on this viewing (my fourth) that the editing is EXCELLENT, and I went to my little Oscar pool thing at Yahoo and changed my Oscar predictions accordingly. Speaking of Oscar predictions, let me say what they are, and we’ll see how well I fare come Oscar night. Films in parentheses are the ones I think DESERVE to win. If there are no parentheses, that means that my prediction agrees with my personal choice.
Best Picture: The Fellowship of the Ring
Best Director: Peter Jackson
Best Actor: Will Smith (Haley Joel Osment in A.I., not nominated)
Best Actress: Nicole Kidman
Best Supporting Actor: Ian McKellen (Tony Shalhoub in The Man Who Wasn’t There, Jude Law in A.I., or Steve Buscemi in Ghost World, all of whom were not nominated)
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Connelly (no opinion)
Best Animated Film: Shrek (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, not nominated)
Best Foreign Language Film: Amelie (no opinion)
Best Adapted Screenplay: A Beautiful Mind (Ghost World)
Best Original Screenplay: Memento
Best Art Direction: Moulin Rouge (this film or A.I., not nominated)
Best Cinematography: The Man Who Wasn’t There (this film or A.I., not nominated)
Best Sound: Black Hawk Down (Final Fantasy, not nominated)
Best Sound Editing: Pearl Harbor (Memento, not nominated)
Best Original Score: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Best Original Song: “May It Be,” from The Fellowship of the Ring (“The Dream Within,” from Final Fantasy, or “For Always,” from A.I., both not nominated)
Best Costume Design: Moulin Rouge (this film or A.I., not nominated)
Best Documentary Feature: Children Underground (no opinion)
Best Documentary Short: Artists and Orphans: A True Drama (no opinion)
Best Film Editing: Memento
Best Make-Up: Moulin Rouge (Planet of the Apes or A.I., both not nominated)
Best Animated Short Film: For the Birds (no opinion)
Best Live Action Short Film: an accountant (no opinion)
Best Visual Effects: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
As usual, the academy will be grossly unjust and will award all the wrong awards to the wrong people. Plus, Whoopi Goldberg is the worst, dumbest Oscar host ever.
3-22-2002
I woke up nice and late this morning; Leon called me this time and we went to the DC to eat. We were greeted outside by a pleasant rain. Because of spring break, the DC’s were on a stupid schedule, so we couldn’t eat. I went back to my room and did nothing important. Eventually I went to eat and happened to run into Danny and Scott, so I ate with them.
A little before 2 o’clock, I went to Film 108, explained that I couldn’t stay for the class, but still got my essay back from Mrs. Fabe. It was a B. Not the best, but better than I did last semester; the first paper in her class in the fall was a C, and the next was a B. Following this trend, I may be able to snag an A on my next paper!
It wasn’t raining when I went into the classroom, only a little misty drizzle was present. All I did was say a few words to the teacher and get my paper, and when I walked back outside, it was pouring. Lacking an umbrella, I walked back to Davidson and got myself soaked.
I’m not completely packed, but there isn’t much left to do. Jonny should be coming up to Berkeley any time now, and when he gets here we’ll do some fun stuff. We just don’t know what, yet.