The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2002

Week 16: Institutions of Madness

5-5-2002

I went home on Saturday morning and went to eat lunch with Morgan and Victor’s family (along with a lot of other people) for the reception-type thing after the funeral for their grandmother. I went directly to this recital thing for Tim’s violin teacher’s students and videotaped the last song for some audition thing. After that we all went home, where Tim and I watched most of Speed on TV and I prepared some worship for cell group (Morgan was at some prom and Tim was a little sick). I hadn’t done it for such a long time. It seemed kind of foreign; I wonder if the rest of cell group felt strange. Oh well.

This morning I woke up a little bit late; late enough for us to be about 20 minutes late for church, or rather, 20 minutes late for the Sunday School that no one shows up on time for anyway. It was a good service, as usual, and Eva was back (already done with school!) whilst the rest of us semester fools are still suffering continually in our institutions of madness and torture.

Many tasks stopped me from getting home: we went to Fry’s to pick up some rechargeable batteries for all those new MP3 players that Mom bought (the Sunnyvale Fry’s is SO much better than that stupid Campbell one) and I picked up the tickets from Mercado so I could get rid of the old check card and start using the new one. Once home, I played FFX for a prolonged period of time, and got really far, too. For dinner we used some coupons at Fresh Choice. We seem to be eating there a lot these days. The family took me straight to Leon’s house, and Jean drove us to Berkeley, and I’ve been straining my brain over this stupid English paper ever since. Currently, I still haven’t written a single word, only quotes, and I don’t even have a concrete thesis yet. DAMN! Oh well, at least I can look forward to Attack of the Clones.

5-6-2002

I woke up pretty early this morning (about 9:00) to work on my paper. I did that for a long time until I went to eat (it was time well spent because the network was down and I couldn’t use the internet – or so I thought). I ate, worked some more, and proofread another one of Nancy’s papers, which caused me to be extra late for Stagecraft. Fortunately, I didn’t miss anything, since he was sort of reviewing the stuff from last time. I went to hand in the time sheet from the lab to him, but he told me to give it to Kate in Dwinelle Annex. I went over there after class and found out that I need a signature from Stan on it. Grr.

At 3:00 I went to the PFA to watch School Daze, Spike Lee’s second movie. I didn’t like it all that much, and it is nowhere near as good as Do the Right Thing. Again, I left before I could hear the old people BS their dentures out of their gums.

I went back to my room and was rudely interrupted by a stupid fire alarm. They have started to become more frequent in these past weeks; I think this is the 4^th this semester. Rather than waste time hanging around, I went to eat.

After I ate, I tried to work on my paper some more, somewhat successfully, but the real revelation of the day came when I discovered that the network wasn’t REALLY, out, I just needed to restart my computer. The whole day without internet! It made me miserable, yet increased my productivity! Anyway...

There was an advance screening of The Sum of All Fears at Wheeler. It’s the new Jack Ryan movie based on Tom Clancy’s book, except that they changed the Islamic terrorists to politically correct and sterile Neo-Nazis. LAME. Ben Affleck wasn’t so hot either as the new Jack Ryan; he seemed to much like some college kid and not like an historian with a Ph.D. and who can convince the presidents of two countries to change their minds over gigantic issues in a matter of seconds. Oh well. It was free.

I need to finish this paper by tomorrow. AUGH!

5-7-2002

I basically spent all day working on my paper.

Of course, I didn’t work STRAIGHT. No, that’s not how it works. I was SITTING at my computer, no question there, but so many things caught my attention in the meanwhile. It is extremely difficult to stay focused on an essay, especially when it’s due in a matter of hours. Most of it was already done by today; all that was left was the conclusion, which is always the hardest part for me. Instead of just writing the confounded thing, I jotted down a few sentences to kick it off, then went back over the entire essay three or four times, each time correcting errors, clarifying the language, removing redundant and excess wording, and expounding on ideas. By the time I had done that a few times over, I was able to finish up the rest of the conclusion and make is sound pretty clever.

I ate with Leon and Igor. Leon gave me the form to fill out for the landlord of that apartment.

In the afternoon I finally completed the essay, with 45 minutes exactly until the time it was due at 440 Wheeler Hall. I moseyed on down, handed it in, moronically stuttered my thanks to the professor, and left. FREEDOM!

Back in my room, Pablo foamed at the mouth, lecturing/damning Danny for being a Green Party advocate who supported Ralph Nader, who in turn caused the 2000 election to be robbed of Al Gore and politely dropped into the hands of George W. Bush. Though Danny was the victim of a heavy amount of redirected vehemence towards Nader, I also suffered a number of verbal batteries (indirectly, of course) through Pablo’s incessant battery and mockery of Christian conservatives. I went to eat.

Ahh... I can rest.

There are so many exciting things happening at the same time! I was chatting with Ben this evening, and we are TOTALLY hyped up for Attack of the Clones; we’ve read reviews of rough cuts, bought the hype, and things look good, really good. Then there’s Mongolia. We will be recording music for the fundraiser CD in the coming weeks. Man, it’s exciting days we live in now.

5-8-2002

Ah, to wake up on a day of freedom. Well, it wasn’t entirely free because I had a review class in Stagecraft, but other than that, I had the day to myself. And I actually got a lot done: I handed in my timesheet to Kate’s mailbox, sent a bunch of emails, and other stuff. I don’t really feel like writing that much. Nothing really exciting happened today anyway. But I’m still extremely psyched about AOTC; I read even more good reviews today. ONE WEEK LEFT!

Oh yeah... at dinner, I was eating with Pablo and these two Asian dudes came and joined us. For some reason it’s always these Asian guys who are always visiting the DC “because they’re too lazy to cook” and try to evangelize to all the liberal, pagan heretics that are Berkeley students. Danny and that one dude that I see sometimes (from Davidson) joined us. They all (Pablo, Danny, and that guy) caroused about, delighting in graphic gay jokes and mockery of Christianity, and all the while, I sat around like a charitable bastard while those two other guys were all trying to convert people they just met by pushing them around (spiritually), “hinting”(quite obviously) that they were all going to hell and Jesus was the way and there was a talk about the existence of God in Davidson that night, etc. Anyway, I think this time, both I and those two dudes were bad representatives of Christ. Crap!!!

By the way, I was told that the “Does God Exist” talk was more like a “Jesus” talk; not really arguing but more like trying to get everyone saved. Why can’t these people do it right? Not that I’m siding with these liberal Berkeleyians either. I can’t believe how deluded they are. No God?? Talking about all this “scientific” nonsense and all this idealistic bullshit. Sometimes I can’t stand this place.

5-9-2002

Ahh... a whole day without any obligations whatsoever. I did lots of worship music tabbing and goofing around. That’s not to say I didn’t accomplish official, productive business. I filled out the rest of the housing application and gave them to Julie, so at least that’s all taken care of. Now we just have to await that phone call...

I drew part of a comic today. I spent the rest of the day doing odd things, as usual, such as check up on www.theforce.net every few minutes for updates on AOTC. At around 6:00 I went over to Eric’s house, all dressed up (well, not really. I left all my nice stuff at home. I was wearing normal green cargo pants and tried to snazz it up with a black, long-sleeved, buttoned shirt, and my semi-formal London Fog coat. I wasn’t even wearing dress shoes, just plain old sneakers). They were supposedly taking us to some fancy place like they did last year (or so we all thought), but I WAS kind of suspicious since they didn’t ask us to confirm whether or not we were going like they did last year (i.e., no reservations needed?) and when we were leaving Eric’s house, he didn’t want to dress up and he ended up not changing a thing except for throwing on a nice-looking jacket. Turns out it was good ole McD’s! I got myself some nice, bad, junk fast food. Ahh. It was so funny because we were all dressed up and weird in a McDonald’s. And we were supposed to go minigolfing but everyone was too cold so we decided to go bowling, but we had to wait 50 minutes so we just went back to Eric’s place and hung out. We wrote letter to ourselves that they will give back to us in one year. I wrote some stuff to encourage myself in the future, no matter what my condition may be. I hope that I may possibly give him some advice and strength to do what is right. Well, we will see in a year’s time.

I read this great publication today that Danny showed me, called Negativity. It’s very good and completely anti-Berkeley-intellectual-bullshit, and chock-full of truth from cover to cover. Of course, the writing wasn’t supported by logic as the intellectual crap is, nor is it professionally written or presented, as the intellectual crap is. I may write them some submissions to amend this problem and give them some credibility. Despite its glaring flaws, I love it.