The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2002

Week 11: I Gave Up 

4-2-2002

I just got back from China today! Man, what a trip, I’ll have to write about it some other time because I have a paper to write. I got up really early, and Dad and I took a taxi to the airport. I took the flight to Shanghai and hung around there for over 6 hours until my flight left to San Francisco. On that flight I was unfortunate enough to be stuck with a huge number of old, white, ugly tourists who were the most annoying people ever. Soon after I sat down in my seat, some grumpy old fat-ass lady told me that she switched my seat with someone else’s (without asking or even telling me. Thanks, lady), and that was stupid because I had the seat with lots of leg room too. Not only that, but she talked to me like I was some sort of retarded moron. For the whole trip, these people stomped around over the plane, clogging aisles, making noise, and blocking people’s view of the TV screens. The plane showed Entrapment, a mediocre movie that I’ve already been dumb enough to watch twice, and I was even dumber to watch it again. At any rate, I made it to SFO safely, took a bus to the BART station, and came back to Berkeley, where my head has been spinning from jet lag ever since.

Small group was good; this time we talked about men.

It’s actually a pretty shameful thing that my Chinese is so poor; it’s embarrassing to the family in China because we’re the only ones who not only can’t speak Cantonese at all, but can’t even speak Mandarin properly. And to the rest of China, we’re just a pack of spoiled, stupid, white-washed Americans.

My head is really starting to reel. But I must write this paper.

4-4-2002

Oops, I didn’t write yesterday. I can explain, but let me talk about the rest of yesterday first.

Leon and I finally worked out! It’s been a long time, and we didn’t get much time, but it was better than nothing. I went to Stagecraft, where I almost fell asleep, then went back to Davidson and took a nice nap, which was interrupted by Danny’s sister and cousin, who came back to visit. I talked to them for a while before Danny came back from class, then we talked a little more before they went out to walk around and eat. At 5:00, I went down to LeVal’s to watch Fargo. The video system was messed up, so we watched it on the big screen in the main room, which had extremely crappy sound and lots of people making noise around us; I could barely understand a single word of dialogue.

About the paper: I received an email that day regarding it, and we got a 5 day extension! That means I didn’t have to write it last night, and therefore could do all kinds of fun stuff with Leedah and Steve (Liu), who were coming up to sleep over. So I sat around the whole night, waiting for them to come up. Steve was out with some girl and didn’t get back to Leedah’s house until about midnight, so they got to my room at around 2:15 am. In the meantime, I downloaded Worms Armageddon on Danny’s laptop with Kazaa (since Morpheus “Preview Edition” is a piece of crap), then got it from him over the network, and installed it. We played it until Steve and Leedah arrived.

Once they were here, I went with them to re-park their car in the Newman Church parking lot, and then we just sort of hung around until we decided to watch The Patriot. Since Danny was going to sleep, we turned my monitor and speakers toward my bed so it wouldn’t bother him (too much). It is an VERY long movie, about three hours, but I was rather surprised to see that Leedah stuck through all of it (Steve conked out near the beginning). By the time it was over, it was nearly 5 in the morning and the sun was coming out. Leedah and I went to sleep for about five hours and awoke at 10:00.

I took them to the DC and used all three of my swipes so they could go in. We spent a lot of time in there just talking and hanging out, and we saw Gloria too. Then we went back to my room, watched some of our old home videos on my computer, took some pictures, and they left.

4-5-2002

Gah, I forgot to finish up my entry yesterday. It wasn’t that exciting anyway. I went to English 100, then went to the Stagecraft lab (which is getting better and better, since I’m getting to know the people better. And it ended early too). For dinner, I had to go out since I had no more swipes, so as usual, I went to Gypsies and got some chicken thing that was pretty tasty. Then I wasted the entire night goofing around in my room instead of studying. Because of this, I went to sleep at 12:30...

...and woke up today at 10:00, giving me almost double my normal sleep time. I went to eat with Leon, goofed around some more (don’t get me wrong, I did TRY to read. But ten pages later, I gave up) and went to Film 108, which wasn’t so bad, and also ended early. I want to go home tonight, but I also want to watch The Royal Tenenbaums and go to IV, so I don’t know what to do.