The Berkeley Archives: Jon Yip Talks to Himself

A Systematic Commentary On My Life At Berkeley

Spring 2003

Week 4: Answered Prayer

2-2-2003

Yesterday I took BART really early and Andrew and his dad picked me up. Then we went to Zion church to pick Tim up. Then Andrew took us, Leedah, and Victor to Denny’s and treated us to lunch. Whee! Victor then drove us to church and we practiced Andrew’s song for a long time. It was really cool. After that I had to stay for Richard’s worship practice because Tim was on the team. I called Mom to pick us up but then after 5:00 we waited for half an hour and I called her again and she JUST left. We had to wait in the cold. BRR.

We went straight to the Ng’s house for this potluck with the Almaden parents. They suddenly decided to change the location of cell to that house, so Tim had to call this girl to tell her, but he didn’t know her phone number, so I had to drive all the way back just so he could call her. I drove all the way back to the Ng’s again, and found out that she called their house and said she couldn’t go. ARGH!

Cell was OK... it’s good to see all the cell people. It ended pretty early. After I went home I tried printing some photos but our printer is herra janky and it printed all crappy.

This morning I got up pretty early, packed and left for church in 15 minutes. We practiced Andrew’s song again, and then I sat and watched Richard’s practice. Jen was there with Victor. She sat next to me and we talked about random stuff (as I recall Jen is quite random). I found out that she is a lot like me. Besides the randomness, she laughs all the time for no reason, she says “hot stuff,” she retracts her hands from the keyboard reflexively when she makes mistakes, and she prefers to sing lower harmony than higher.

I finally gave a copy of Battle Royale to Eugenia. I listened to Jonny’s song because I wouldn’t be able to hear his audition later. Jonny was back! So was Mason!

The service was good. Ralph’s message was excellent. Really, really excellent. It was about how we need to repent about our sins because God will JUDGE HIS PEOPLE! That’s a fact jack! A lot of times we treat Christianity like a game, but it’s serious. We often play with our lives on the line between heaven and hell.

Andrew’s song went pretty well, although I personally contributed a few flubs; Andrew reported many others but I didn’t notice them on live hearing.

I took a whole ton of pictures after service. I am taking way too many. My hard drive will fill up. We went to Burger King and met the family there, ate, and then went to SF for Tim’s Suzuki graduation recital thing. It was actually pretty short but there was a lot of people. There were 5 graduates I think. They played this song. After that they took me back to Berkeley. Shirley was here. I hung around and kind of read my reader for English 176 (but not really) until 8:00, when Shirley decided to watch The Patriot on TV. I took my book over there and read some of it meanwhile. The TV version had some significant cuts; of course the graphic cannon and hatchet action was edited out, and the scene where he hacks the soldier up with the hatchet and he’s covered with blood was changed so that he was covered with mud (I wonder how they did that. Did they digitally color correct the red into mud color, or was it a re-shoot specifically for TV and airlines?), the hatchet into the dude’s head was cut, and most disturbingly, they took out the part when Benjamin takes the bayonet out of Tavington’s throat, which is an awesome part! It was funny because the whole time Shirley was all going “KILL!” and shouting all this violent stuff at Tavington, which is unlike her. Oh and she got us pizza from Fat Slice. WOOHOO! I gave her half a Whopper that I had left over because she was eating a lot. Then I ate the other half.

After the movie I we watched some of the extra stuff on The Bourne Identity DVD that Leon gave to Shirley for “Christmas” today. Then I tried to do some reading, but basically it proved futile. The beginning of the article was OK, but now I’m bored, lost, and ghettified. It is so stupid. The writing is awful. He retraces his steps over and over and runs around in endless loops. “Let’s ignore this fact,” he says. Then later he’ll say “oh, but we left this out” and “let my try to explain” crap. Doesn’t make sense? Exactly.

Leon is head over heels in love with this Yamaha guitar that’s really cheap on Musician’s Friend. I am trying to convince him not to buy it (at least yet) because right now he is in the infatuation stage and is not quite himself. It took a while, but I finally managed to successfully hold him off temporarily, until he can get a more objective view of the situation and make a more logical decision. He was so impulsive. He really was going to spend 500 bucks just like that. Speaking of money I got my hong bao today, it was 20 bucks.

2-3-2003

Urg... I woke up early and got up late, as usual. I slept at about 4:30 last night because I went to bed at 3:00 and then talked with Leon for a long time about various stuff. At least I started off the morning on a humorous note: Ben pulled a me in Davis, under hilarious circumstances; and though I know (from personal experience, obviously) that it is quite an unpleasant experience, hearing about the story was a lot of fun.

I did reading and a lot of devotionals today. I figure I have all this time before class so I should use the time well instead of wasting it. But I ended up not going to class anyway because I had to wait for that UPS dude to come and deliver my books... I didn’t even have a time frame from his note; I just had to wait and wait until he came and I was afraid to even use the bathroom in case he would ring the bell while I was in there and I would miss it. I could have gone to class because he came at like 3 something. Oh well. That means I can’t miss the Wednesday lecture because I need to summarize it. AGH.

I actually spent most of the afternoon reading and falling asleep. I realized (when reading the Bible this morning) that this Marx bullshit is really stupid from a Biblical standpoint. Here are these retarded philosophers and economists and scholars who keep on blithering around about the “production” and how the system needs to supply itself, while the Bible has a simple answer (which I read in 2 Corinthians): Jesus supplies everything we need. The end. You can burn your copy of Das Kapital now.

I made spaghetti for dinner. I pretty much finished the readings, I guess. There’s not much more for me left in those stupid books anyway. Shirley finished all her reading too (for the week!) so we were pretty much watching TV and stuff. Victor and Chris came over to study. It was pretty funny, they make all these random noises and comments at the table. I almost went crazy again trying to get Shirley to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark instead of watching random channel surf stuff on TV. ARGH! I still can’t believe it.

Man I was just so tired today. What’s with that.

I called a bunch of people today, but not a single person picked up. I left a message for Eric, then for Felix, then for Ben. I called Leedah but he was sleeping (ghetto). I called Amy and left a message there too. Dang! It’s a Monday night! What’s the deal?

Aww yeah it’s 2:15 and I just finished writing the rapping bridge for “Unrecognizable!” I’m going to rap this coming Sunday! This will join “Perfect Peace [Reloaded]” as the hardcore auditions of Unveiled 2003! w00t!

2-4-2003

Woke up this morning at about 9:45 (pretty early by my book) and went to the RSF to lift weights! Yeah! But I didn’t get to use the bench because there was so many people, so I just used the machines a lot instead. I did that until I got tired of it, then went downstairs to use the boxing room. Boy, that was fun. I punched the big heavy bag and slightly sprained my wrist, then punched that little bouncy ball bag that simulates a moving head. Now THAT is fun. It is pretty difficult; I missed a lot. It just shows that if you get in a fight, you can move a lot and they probably won’t be able to hit you as much (unless they practice with that bouncy bag thing).

Upon return I had a lot of free time. I can’t remember what I did with it though. It was not wasted. I listened to and evaluated Unveiled audition songs with Shirley. OH!!! God answered my prayer! Shirley doesn’t have to go to discussion on Fridays! She can go kickboxing! AAAHHHH!!! w00t!

At 2:00 I went to class, which wasn’t so exciting. Then I went back to the apartment briefly, and then went to chorus, which was pretty good. She kept the basses and altos back late but I left at 4:45 anyway to meet small group for dinner. We went to this place on College called Gordos. It was pretty good. Then we had small group, which was fun and good and all. A whole bunch of people didn’t go to study. It’s just not a good time for it. Julia, Clarrissa, and Wayne stayed at our place to study some. I did some reading. It was kind of late to call people, so I IMed people instead. I messaged a lot of people to see how they were doing. They appeared to be happy about it. Also there was herra emails today, mostly jokes, concerning the new title for Unveiled 2003 because “Unveiled” has already been taken. Whoops.

Perfect Peace has been stuck in my head all day.

I didn’t have much reading to do... nothing urgent, at least. Hmm.

I’ve managed to keep Leon from buying the guitar, for now. Currently the definitive factor is whether or not the guitar is really made of solid rosewood, or some other funky stuff. But right now (2:30 am) we are looking at cars. I am drooling over the pictures and 360 degree models of the Jetta, Beetle, Altima, and Maxima. Ahhh they are sooo beautiful! I want a car so much!!! SOB. All these people out there with their parents buying them cars... YOU TAKE IT FOR GRANTED.

My wrist still hurts from that punching bag.

2-5-2003

Oh man... got up at 11 today! It’s because I went to sleep at 3 and then talked with Leon again til almost 5! First we started off arguing about the whole education/distribution of wealth thing, then we got into Chinese and started speaking everything in Mandarin to practice.

So I was planning to go to Safeway today, but scratch that idea since I didn’t have enough time after getting up so freakin’ late. I did something (can’t remember what) until it was class time, and had lost track of it, so I was almost late. To my surprise, I enjoyed lecture today, probably because it was about The Matrix. Yes, it was still all bullshit, but it was fun bullshit. I realize more and more that it is a brilliant movie. Neo/Keanu as passive, the sparks at the end become fireworks... heh, lots of cool stuff. I wrote down few notes, but I remember most of it.

Then I went to sectionals, which was OK. I was tired.

Long has been the time period since the Mongolia trip, and it feels even longer, but I had not even gotten around to watching the video. So I did it today. I was pleasantly surprised and disappointed at the same time. I was happy because contrary to what I had assumed, the loud annoying buzzing in the camera was only there in about 1 or 2 shots, and everything else was perfectly fine! The sound was great! Also there were some great scenes that I got. I was let down, however, that I had spent a lot of camera time on rather dull scenes, which weren’t exactly dull in themselves but I recorded them for too long and they dragged. Also, since the camera doesn’t have image stabilization or anything, the picture was HERRA shaky and made me motion-sick. You win some, you lose some.

At 5:00 I headed to Barrows for the decal we (some small group people) are going to take together. It is about MMO (massive multiplayer online) gaming. For real! The instructor basically said we’d be playing games “studying” the social interactions and responses, etc. But she made it pretty clear that what the goal was to make a team, an online presence to be reckoned with, and OWN. Awww yeah this is going to be SWEET! Two units baby! Oh, Wayne, Julia, and Jason were there. Where is everyone else? Come on!

Headed back, and Wayne hung around the apartment to read. We were thinking about watching the extended version of LOTR that Leon brought up, but we ended up not. Speaking of which, a hilarious conversation took place (Leon, of course, unwittingly uttering the beautiful punchline):

JON: So let’s watch Lord of the Rings.

WAYNE: Yeah, how about I’ll read, and you can tell me when the new scenes are showing.

LEON: What? There aren’t any– oh, I thought you said NUDE scenes.

And then of course:

WAYNE and JON: Hahahahahahaha!!!

JON: So THAT’S what they cut out!

We also thought about watching The Bourne Identity but we ended up not doing that either. Leon went to the Rock with some other small group people, but not before attending a rush at a frat. Wayne went home. He was tired.

I called Christina Sun (small side story: I got another sign. I was wondering who to call, and thought “maybe I should call Christina.” Then her away message popped up. Guess what it said. “Call cell.” End of story), which was great, but for some reason either her cell phone or mine got all breaking-up-ey yet didn’t disconnect. So I was going “hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?” for like a few minutes until it finally cut off. But we picked it back up over AIM. I’ll add segments of another great conversation that totally made my day (or week, actually. Month, even).

C: anything new with your hair?

J: it’s nice and long

J: but I actually might cut it on Friday

J: because you know how great clips is having that 5 buck haircut thing going on

C: so you’re gonna chop it for the 5 bucks deal?!

J: err...

C: i thot you wanted it to growww

J: debating

J: aaauugh

J: what do you think I should do

J: for real

C: well i like your hair the way it is

C: it’s like the jon hair

J: long hair *shakes hair like a girl*

J: or short hair

J: woowww

J: thanks

J: I NEVER get that

C: and it was awesome when you wore the business suit cuz you put your hair back and it looked all matrix-ish

C: that your hair is cool?

J: yeah

J: especially from girls

J: who think it’s all grody and nasty

C: it’s not even

C: i mean if you had dredlocks..I dunno..

J: and it’s kind of weird getting compliments from guys like leedah who are a bit on the fruitier side

J: AHAHA? NO

C: but your hair is like perfectly fine in my opinion

J: ahhhhhh thanks

J: wow

J: I’m touched

Seriously... I never get support for my hair. And just when I was really thinking about cutting it all away... when I was watching the Mongolia video and I saw my relatively short hair, I was thinking that it looked pretty good... but now... aaahhhh what do I do? At least now my faith has been restored (hair-wise).

It is pretty early in the night... only 11:30. I already finished my writing assignment for Friday’s discussion. Boy am I on the jump of things or what?? YEEHAH!

Tomorrow I will go to Safeway. I hope.

2-6-2003

I went to Safeway this morning! Hah! I did it. Boy it was really windy outside. I bought herra food. Heh heh.

Class was boring. Ugh. Then I went to the apartment to eat more food, and then to chorus. Dude, God answered another prayer! He made Marika move me from my spot to the second row! No more stinky guys next to ME! HAHAHAHAH!!! That’s the second blatantly answered prayer this week! You know, praying makes a difference. I’ve been praying a lot these past weeks, all the time. While I’m singing at chorus, I pray. When I’m walking around, I pray. When I’m sitting around doing nothing at the computer, I pray. There’s always something to pray for and it is so easy to do. You can do it anywhere at anytime. Awesome.

Anyhoos, I came back and spent basically the whole evening on email and IM, figuring out stuff for worship practice, Unveiled 2003 and the conference. Boy it’s so much pressure on me... so much stuff to think about... but it’s worth it. I reviewed EVERY song semi-extensively (to the extent that they needed to be reviewed) and sent that off to John. Shirley went to drama practice. Leon went to study with some small group people at the library, but I can’t stand the library.

Ugh it’s so late now, and there’s kickboxing tomorrow. But Shirley can GOOO!! Yess! Answered prayer, man! It works!

Tomorrow is the last day of Great Clips sale... what do I do...

2-7-2003

Friday. The alarm clock was especially painful this morning. Usually I wake up and turn it off before it beeps, but it this time it knocked me straight out of deep sleep. It’s all because I slept so late yesterday. Leon and I were talking again... about tapeworms. Ugh. And it went on for quite a while, until we got to talking about the usual again (the future, signs, etc.)

Speaking of signs. They are a wonderful thing. I used to be kind of skeptical towards signs, in terms of “God, if you want me to ____, then give do ____.” Anyway now I’m rushed for time so I can’t get into it further, but maybe another time.

I went kickboxing with Shirley (hallelujah! She doesn’t have to go to discussion) which was pretty tiring, but not as bad as the past few weeks. Someone gave me a mat today. How nice.

I just kind of watched whatever Shirley was watching on TV (Fresh Prince and The Makeover Story thing) until class time. Discussion was OK. We talked about The Matrix. I would get into that too but I’m rushed here. I had a few things to say but didn’t.

For the rest of the afternoon I just hung out; Jason and Alan came over and we played music, watched the ghetto celebrity basketball game, and they played NBA Street. Then we went to large group, which was cool. I didn’t want to spend money on food, and I had stuff to do, like pack, so I didn’t go eat with small group people. I walked with Crystal; she didn’t want to go by herself. I may or may not be leaving soon.

I feel like so much more happened today, and I would write it if I wasn’t so rushed. Tina is leaving for SJ in a few minutes, that’s why, and I want to catch a lift.

Stuff I need to write about next time: my chicken recipe for stew, signs, stuff.

OK, Tina is running a little later, so I have time. Back to signs.

Anyway, I don’t think we should be demanding things from God, but I think it is Biblical to sometimes ask for signs from God, like Gideon. But now I am more often amazed by signs that I DON’T ask for, but still appear to me. I am beginning to take everything as a sign, especially stuff like answered prayers. This has all been coming together this past week or so. Besides the examples that I’ve already experienced with the phone-calling, take a few other ones: the answered prayer of Shirley being able to go to kickboxing with me. Sounds kind of hokey, but I think that’s a sign, if for nothing else, to keep on going to kickboxing. Heh. And how God answered another prayer and had Marika move my spot in chorus so I wouldn’t have to stand next to the unbearably smelly dudes (in fact, the guys I stood next to now smell like mint). Another sign, if nothing, that I should stay in chorus. That’s where He wants me to be.

Another prayer got answered today (WOW!) although not the answer I was praying for. Leon got his petition back in the mail (for waiving his English 1B class) and it was rejected. I was praying for it to pass, but it didn’t. However, I simply take this as a sign that Leon is not meant to graduate this spring, because he had been debating about it for a while. This turned-down petition means that he CAN’T graduate this spring. So there you go.

This sounds a lot like the movie Signs that M. Night Shyamalan made last summer, but I think there’s a lot of truth to be had in this sort of thing. Prayer is key, everything else follows with it. And how “coincidental” that in both ROL and at small group, we are beginning to emphasize this.

OH! And the worship workshop conference has been rescheduled for March! Which means I can go to The Call! (It’s a long story.) OH MY GOODNESS IT JUST GETS BETTER AND BETTER! All this awesome stuff has been happening to me prayer-wise, and sign-wise, even though I’ve been herra stressed out over a bunch of stuff (like getting 2 more units, finding a job after I graduate, if I indeed do graduate). I emailed the OASES guy and he said it’s too late to join. So that leave’s me with finding another decal. If nothing works, maybe that’s a sign that I shouldn’t graduate. We will see. I should give a testimony on this on Sunday. Yes, I think I will. Speaking of Sunday, I’m a bit nervous about the whole rapping thing, but I should pray about that too.

Whoa... I’ve written so much. Tina and/or her bro is really taking her/their time.

OH and another thing... the thing with Christina complimenting my hair, just before I was about to cut it... that’s another sign.

What about chicken... oh yeah... from last night. So you take the chicken (thighs) and put them in a bowl. Throw in worstershire sauce (spelling whatever) and soy sauce. Also add some seasoned salt and garlic salt. AND (here is where I got experimental) put in a LOT of dried parsley flakes, a lot of thyme (yesterday I shook the jar too much and spilled it everywhere... “Crap!” I said. “Now I got all this thyme on my hands.” Only about a fifth of that was an intentional pun). Normally I was too afraid to put that much in, but... you’ll see.

So you put some oil on the skillet and throw the bowl into it. Fry both sides of the chicken pieces for a while until they get browned. They will be raw on the inside still. Meanwhile the sauces and the spices are getting seared into the chicken and it smells HERRA good.

Then toss all that into a pot, throw in some chicken broth, or vegetable broth (I didn’t have any so I used half a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup, which worked great). Also put in some corn, beans, and carrots. Boil the whole thing for as long as you want (the longer the better; the chicken will get more tender... mmm) and it won’t burn or anything. Just leave the cover a little bit off so it won’t spill over.

When you’re almost ready to eat, add some starch to the stew to thicken it to your taste. Baking powder works, and flour does OK too. Be careful not to over add because it will get a lot thicker than you think it will. Anyway, stir that all around and you’re good to go! Boy, it was good.

Oh and the rejected petition... it wasn’t even a letter from them. They just sent back his own letter with a stamp that said “REVIEWED” and a hand-written note: “Denied.” That’s all it said. It even had that period after the word. SO GHETTO. I can believe the L&S department could have such little class that they couldn’t even reply themselves except for a “Denied.” note. It was a good petition too. I bet they didn’t even consider it. They probably barely even looked at it.