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April 30, 2004 - sacramento,
ejc dance, bday1, bday2, mt, now
-12:26 am: the past couple of weeks have been rather insane, thus this late entry. I know all of you probably want more entries... but unfortunately my fun fun busy busy schedule doesn't allow that... so lets' keep to the real highlights
-saturday, apr24 - TBP District 15 conference. A gathering of NorCal TBP chapters + Cal Poly in the lovely student union at Sacramento State. Mostly boring, although had some fun and interesting conversations with non-berkeley TBP ppl. Conclusions/results from conference: Sac State prof hates us, more work to do on a convention bid, CA A is still the best chapter!!
also sat - EJC/SWE dance aka the mirage. Wasnt much of a mirage to me, but eh whatever. I did plenty of dancing.. now that for some reason i don't care about embarrassing myself in front of large crowds anymore. Mucho food and uh plenty of TBP officers there. The best move of the night.. the "brian dance"
-sunday: 117 project!! fun cutting out paper, printing, posting and assembling the backboard. Too bad the actual stuff isn't done yet!!! (i.e. the actual physical demonstrations). Worked on that from about 11 to 5. Then at 6 went over to Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant for my b-day1 dinner. Organized by the awesome jen, had 11 ppl there: Wen-Lin, Eddie, Karen, Diana, Nathan, James, Po-kai, Jen, Kathy, Heena and of course me. excellent food and sweet honey wine! Thank you guys so much for coming!! It means a great deal to me. Extra special thanks to Jen for organizing it all and getting the tiramisu cake. I'm very lucky to have such special friends.
-monday: bent polishing and my offical b-day. Mike decided my present would be to get the candidates to tie me to the Bent. Unlike last Bent polishing i gave in rather easily, mainly cuz it was HOT. After the Bent was all shiny, i went to history, then home. Then Yeh and David took me out for bday2 dinner at Mel's! Michelle arrived late, and Karen Lee never made it.. but still more awesome friends! I got a very nice poster from Michelle and David and Yeh gave me an interesting card game. After that dinner, i escaped to attend the EJC elections for next year... where i witnessed the acension of Ryan to the presidency, the pushing of Eddie to webmaster and Trent's assumption of Athletics chair! Awesome job Tau Bates! and bioes!
-then came the fun: i was kidnapped (picked up) by the three DIVAS JH, GG and EC (jen, germaine and eileen). I was blindfolded (allowed to see cuz i would get car sick) and let into the gettaway truck (honda civic). To further confuse me the truck (civic) driven by JH went in deliberate circles (got lost). We arrived at the DIVA hideout (Fenton's) were i was subjected to torture (banana split).
-hahah! Thanks so much Jen (again), Germaine and Eileen for taking me out for the ice cream. Even though i didn't get to try the banana special thingy, it was awesome!
-That was by-far the best set of b-day celebrations i've had up here in Berkeley. The last three i've spent with family or a smaller set of friends. It's very interesting to see just how much larger my circle of friends has become since last year. Truly something to remember!
-MT yesterday: BioE117 had a CE130 type problem on it much to my satisfaction. Bioes probably all died because of it, so yay.
-cool a totally happy entry for once...
April 21, 2004 - TBP worries and other worries
-12:26 am: so i've officially selected a date for TBP officer elections.. and i have angst over what will happen with next semester.. i think i need to push ppl into running for positions and start training them. AH wrong things to worry about, especially since the current semester has it's own problems, the most concerning of which is the um lack of a banquet location! Definitely should have been arranged by now, and ideally much earlier in the semester. Bah sometimes i think most of my VP advice was ignored...
-so yet another job thing fell through.. what else is new. Seems like everybody says that we dont' have positions right now, try again later! I feel like a dog chasing its tail; all this energy expended, looking like a complete idiot, going absolutely nowhere. But the analogy is not totally valid, since i assume that dogs are happy while they do that. More and more that decision not to apply to grad school looks like a very bad call (and EVERYONE around me says so too, i really don't understand why ppl thing i would make such a good grad student when i didn't do very much research...)
-and talk about a damper on the semester. I've never really been happy this semester; always have anxiety and constant worry over it. And it sucks. Sucks that i can't enjoy my last semester as fully as i should.
April 20, 2004 - what a monday
-1:20 am: unlike other mondays, today was quite enjoyable indeed. First off, learned about atomic bombs in history (the actual physics behind them and the unclassified designs). Afterward spent an hour or so simply chatting online waiting to go to Ace Hardware to get more stuff for the 117 project. They have like so many springs and random things! That store is awesome... and i never knew it had all those things. Too bad :(
-afterward went to an art store down the way to buy a display board, foam board, and some construction paper. Then we got obsessed with the artsy stuff like pastels, markers, pencils and graphite. Being in there reminded me of the good old days of 8th grade, where i had my first and last art class. Markers being too expensive at the art store, we instead went to of all places, the Albertsons in El Cerrito Plaza to buy them. So we bought them and other junk foods then proceeded to eat at the Macaroni Grille. So strange to eat out at a medium-classy restaurant on a weekday, especially a monday. Anyway, that was kinda cool!
-i have a weird feeling about this next week... and weird as in good and cool things will happen. Don't know why really, but hey let it come.
April 19, 2004 - the interesting weekend
-12:36 am: Friday-saturday was the ACS Relay for Life.. in which i spent from 4:20 pm on friday to 10:45 am on saturday in Edwards Stadium. Quite the sleepless experience in which many interesting things happened. i actually was able to run 1.5 miles without needing to stop (i thought i would have to). i think i walked a total of ten miles (around 40 laps) during my walking shifts. Me and Wen-Lin putting up the small tent brought back memories of fishing/camping trip to Lake Cachuma! Anyway, we somehow managed to get it up and discovered it was quite quite small compared to the other tents. Some ppl had some really advanced looking ones, but then again some groups went without a tent altogether. Other ppl arrived and the whole thing finally got it's start with an opening ceremony. After that we took our shifts, played cards, removed tickets from faces, tried to sleep, and a whole bunch of other stuff. In all i got about 2 hrs of sleep total.
-i managed to solve my situation with buying Ryan at the date auction. I somehow managed to locate the girl i outbid during the Relay and simply offered the date, much to her delight. It somewhat works out for everybody. I will still have the embarrassment attached (not to mention the loss of $65)... but whatever.
-Today went to Germaine's place to work on 117 project. We came up with more specific things to do with our project and even bought some of the stuff at Safeway. Afterwards, Eileen was a lifesaver and took me to the College Ave Safeway, where i did my grocery shopping for the next week or two.
-there less than five weeks left in my college days. It's kinda scary and exciting at the same time, with more weight on the scary part (because i don't have a job). I've not done a good job at all in the search, and it's mainly because i have schoolwork and TBP stuff to take care of first. My hope is that once i'm done with school, i'll have the focus i need to actually pursue something with enough rigor. However, the fact that none of my earlier applications produced anything is quite discouraging. There is small comfort in the news that many other people are having difficulties. It's seems i am in a rather crowded boat (that is sinking). Maybe that email i got from that random person awhile back is true and the engineering profession here is just a resource that is being outsourced.
"Hope is simultanenously your greatest strength and weakness."
April 16, 2004 - chaotic weeks
-1:22 am: these entries are getting rarer and crapier.. oh well. So like from the title of this entry you can guess that the past two weeks have been um quite chaotic. The fluids midterm actually turned out quite quite well... i got 100/100 in fact. The prof had the class give a round of applause without actually pointing me out and that would've been fine, but then Sarah pointed at me during the clapping... WOW now i'm like everyone's enemy.
-last Friday went to Nation's to enjoy some good pie with Kathy and Wen-Lin over some interesting conversations about grad school, law school and RCSA.
-I pretty much blew away the saturday watching the NHL playoffs. Sunday we had the semesterly TBP-HKN bball game (in which TBP won the primary game 12-4). I of course sucked having not played since um i can't even remember. Ultimately ended up with but a single layup and plenty of aching muscles (particular my left quads)
-Mon and Wed ran the TBP E-week table!!
-Tu... the night of craziness that saw me spend $120 on two dates at the date auction... $65 on poor Ryan, who I NEVER intended to actually buy, but took a large risk in trying to get his bid higher. Same thing happened with the other date i bought (um at least a girl :p that time)...
-the whole E-week stuff has distracted me away from jobless problem and that has been a good thing.. since i've been seriously depressed over it. I really dislike having the future in limbo.
April 7, 2004 - what i want for my b-day
-1:02 am: so my b-day comes in like 19 days... a random number to be counting down but whatever... The only thing i really want for my b-day is like a job interview (yeah not even the job itself... need to take it one step at a time...). I don't think anything could make me happier (short of let's say winning the lottery.. which i can't since i don't play...). Even the anxiety of having some job interview to do would be much better than my constant worry... and getting one would do wonders to help restore my shattered self-confidence. So um yeah... if by some miracle of God any recruiters are reading this.... GIVE ME INTERVIEW! PLEASE!! ¡¡¡POR FAVOR!!! ONEGAISHIMASU!!!!
April 6, 2004 - fluidic fun
-10:45 pm: if the divergence of a fluid velocity field is 0, then the fluid flow is incompressible and a stream function exists... if the curl of a fluid velocity field is 0, then the fluid flow is irrotational and a velocity potential function exists... if both div and curl are 0... you have a very boring fluid flow that is steady, incompressible, irrotational, inviscid.... can anyone find me an example of a fluid flow which actually has all of those properties?
-TBP general mtg today was actually a very fun mtg with a rather interesting ice-breaker in which ppl claimed i was hot....(WTF!?). That was followed by some hilarious movie charades then Mexican food. After the meeting a few ppl played Mafia, the classic dorm game which i am generally terrible at.... I was kinda disappointed that i only got to play once, but it's perfectly understandable that people have midterms on stuff to do. I, of course, have the 106 midterm which i was rambling about up there. The next couple of weeks look to be extremeley busy TBP/EJC wise. There's E-Week , Cal Day, the Relay for Life and a whole bunch of events to go to/run. After that in the next week, need to do something for BioE project, run a fundraiser, and attend a TBP conference... then comes the last midterm (more like a final), TBP initiation and finally FINAL exams.... oh yeah and then i enter the world of the unemployed looking for jobs....
April 5, 2004 - fluids studying not going so well
-11:42 pm: i have my fluids midterm on thursday and i'm finding it very difficult to study. Why? I just look at the equations and nothing seems overly hard. Potential flows weeeeeeeee, just do some fun partial derivatives. Navier-Stokes Equations? they only look intimidating! once you know what all the terms mean, they actually aren't so bad. The only weird thing is this similtude and dimensional analysis stuff. I'm not sure how one studies dimensional analysis for a test.
-on the brighter side of things... finally got around to some grocery shopping! I think that was the first time i've been happy in the last couple of days. (SHEESH i've hit rock bottom to be made happy by grocery shopping...)
-one of my roommates started playing metroid prime and is up to nearly the end.... i used his save file to relive a classic battle with Omega Pirate... and i'm currently wondering how i could do against Meta Ridley. Freaking Meta Ridley took me like 10 tries to beat the first time through and i never got the opportunity to try the cheap Wavebuster technique. HMMMM.
April 2, 2004 - it's been awhile
-7:03 pm: because of spring break and the immunology midterm , haven't had time to write anything in this blog. oh well
-spring break seemed consist of doing nothing much other than helping with preparations for my sister's b-day party. I did get a new cell phone and a new $500 pair of glasses which include transitions lenses, sun-glass clip and some other random coatings. My parents' insurances is good enough so that we didn't have to pay a penny. On the negative side, vision in my right eye was slightly poorer than two years ago, when i had my last eye exam.
-Probably the funnest thing about the time that has passed since the last entry was karaoke for Jen's b-day last tuesday. I sang a lot... totally different experience than my first time, probably cuz i was more comfortable with the ppl i was with.
-this week has had sort of a creepy theme to it, the jobless theme. Left and right i overhear ppl talk about how they can't find a job. I got one email from a TBP member who joined and graduated last semester, asking for some industry contact info. Then i get this random ass email from a random person proclaiming that the "profession of engineering has been downgraded to a resource" which is incidentally being outsourced. At the moment i can't help but agree. My job search has been extremely frustrating and has so far produced nothing. As a result, i find myself in a rather pathetic state. i have no self-confidence to speak of anymore and am feeling pretty worthless. I can't even believe in my abilities anymore. FACK who knew 13 A+ 's could be so utterly useless!! It's not a good thing when whenever you have anytime to stop and think you can't help but think what a worthless fuck you are. I'll leave college in May having accomplished absolutely nothing. All i can look forward to is more rejection and an ambiguous bleak future....
March 17, 2004 - soldering
-11:25 pm: took advantage of the new EJC program to put on classes about various engineering things. Today's class was soldering on electric components. Very fun! I had a working thing, but when after i clipped off the extra leads, the thing suddenly stopped working. I probably busted something... probably the transistor. I've had a habit so to speak with breaking transistors. I used to have these electric mini-kits and i would always overload and burn out the transistors.... probably did the same here.
-tomorrow is the 2nd TBP candidate meeting/ 1st general meeting or whatever the hell you want to call it. A bunch of officers are supposed to bring rice cookers tomorrow (and presumably the rice) so we can "save" money. It'll be quite odd for me to be attending bioE117 discussion with a rice cooker... bah whatever.
March 16, 2004 - spring break approaches
-10:11 pm: but it feels like it's here already.... This is what i get for finishing the me106 hwk a bit early, a tad bit of boredom. I suppose i should study for that MCB150 midterm that occurs right after spring break... but the very nature of MCB classes (they are such that you absorb as much as you can in the three days before the test, then subsequently forget it all the day after) nullifies that. So during my TBP office hours (which no one comes to) i worked on some ME106 problem that is due on April 1... A fool i may be but all the officers in that class gladly copied my partial solution :P (which i completed later while waiting for my food at Tako sushi, good thing it turned out right... else i led them all to the wrong solution)
-so today i made an endorsement of two ppl running for ASUC senate. I sorta based it on their party's reputation, APPLE Engineering, which has honestly done much for the engineering community the past couple of years. I didn't however let them use the title TBP President... which i think would make it look like TBP endorses them, which i don't think it can.... so we "settled" on a compromise of TBP member. Of course engineers who know what TBP is, probably know who i am... so it's the same.. but i dunno. At least it's not official. I wish them luck and plenty of help... it's really hard to be elected without being connected to the Greeks/athletes. Hopefully we can mobilize all 3200 engineers, then they should be in easily, but you know the apathy of the engineers.
Ready, steady, can't hold me back
Ready, steady, give me good luck
Ready, steady, never look back
Ready, steady, let's get started, ready, steady go!
The scenery flies by me and appears before me as if it's rolling
Even if I must get desparate, I won't let the target get away
If a map is unreliable, just burn it
Let's grab ahold of the buried truth with this hand
I've come here by running frantically
There is a loud beat so loud it feels like it's going to explode
I hear your voice echoing and calling me
But I have no time to stop here
Ready, steady, go
Please trust me
Translated 2nd opening theme of Fullmetal Alchemist... translated jrock has odd lyrics, no?
March 15, 2004 - a disturbing prediction, sunday at the beach
-11:58 am: if Al-Qaeda was truly behind last thursday's train bombings in Madrid, it would seem natural for us to expect terrorist attacks in the US sometime near the November 2 election. Spain may have been a testing ground for the terrorist groups: terrorize the country right before an election and cause the election to swing to the anti-war party. If it was a test, then Al Qaeda's brass must be giving the green light to an attack near November 2, as Spain's ruling government was ousted in an upset election. Spain's new prime minister elect has pledged to bring home the Spanish troops from Iraq as early as possible. The outgoing conservative Spanish government was staunch supporter of the US-led war, despite a majority of Spaniards being opposed. Polls before the attacks even had the conservative government winning the election, but the outcome was clearly affected enormously by thursday's attacks.
-The stage is similar in the US. Support for the war is eroding. An attack right before the election would seem to put the idea in the voter's head that everything that Bush's program has done was useless as we are still as vunerable, if not more vunerable to attacks. And the war on terrorism has been the centerpiece of Bush's government ever since 9/11. The US should be very wary come late October/early November. If the timeline of Spain is to be followed exactly: morning rush hour October 30, 2004.
-onto less disturbing topics. Yesterday was the semesterly TBP beach cleanup... Repeated what was done last semester with the burying and crazy running into (freezing) water. The water part was a lot more crazy this time though since we did it about 10 times! I was disappointed that no candidates went "all-in,"but hey it's their choice.
March 13, 2004 - Bent before and after... annoyed
-12:50 am: from Bent Polishing on March 12
-before (8:58 am)
-after at 3:04 pm
March 11, 2004 -
view from the Berkeley Hills
-7:18 pm: views from near the Lawrence Hall of Science
-view toward the Golden Gate Bridge
-view toward Emeryville and the Bay Bridge
March 10, 2004 -
back...
-9:33 pm: wow 10 days into the month for the first entry.... why? laziness mostly, had a couple midterms etc etc. Highlights of the past 10 days....
Thursday (3/4): Leon visisted after his interview at stanfurd med. Ate dinner with him, Benson, Dave, Daniel and Karen all formerly of Freeborn Hall. Didn't have much time to chit chat as i went bowling immediately after dinner with TBP. TBP bowling was pretty good. Somehow managed a 122 and 94 in the games we played, which is much much better than i usually get. Also embarrassed myself and candidate Zac in DDR at the Albany bowl. OMG i can't play that game for crap!
Friday: overslept.. so i didn't make it to the ME106 discussion i usually attend... After history met up with Leon, Cindy and Adam up in the chemistry plaza. Talked for a bit... then we split up. Leon, Adam and I walked down to LSA to visit a couple labs, then Leon and I went over to another Dave's apt to meet up with Dave, Amber and her roommate Ruth. Played/watched some SNES Tetris (how ghetto) and also played some trivial pursuit. Afterward, Leon and I split up and I was late to a engineering society executive pow-wow. Not too much of a pow-wow since only TBP, HKN and ASME were represented. Was pretty social... talked about many random things. I really thought we were going to discuss issues/business, but not having done so was perfectly fine.
Saturday: went to the Team Chartering E-Futures module for the third time... Best one in my opinion since it is the shortest and also involves building towers with K'nex.
Sunday: spent studying history... bleh
Monday: f******* history midterm and studying for 117
Tuesday: OMG the 117 was a total BIOE test... I WANTED HARD CORE ME STUFF!!! damnit. Oh well. TBP bylaws meeting takes much much longer than i thought it would, mostly cuz ppl wanted last minute changes. But they're all done now and ready to be sent in. After that and officers meeting, went out to dinner with Brian, Ryan, Jen and Wen-Lin at northside La Burrita. Actually we spent like 30 minutes in front of Bechtel discussing Jen's grad school dilemma (which i would MUCH rather have than my job dilemma..) before dinner and then much of dinner on the same subject., but also some other things SUCH AS HOW I AM NOT GOING TO BE IN THE DATE AUCTION. After dinner, Jen, Wen-Lin and I took a trip to the roof of the Gaia building just to show it off, look through the telescope thingy etc. More conversation... but of forbidden topics! Finally day done... seems like it was quite fun filled!
Today: got Prof. Lieu signature on the bylaws so we can now officially send it in. I really hope it doesn't come back all marked up and rejected but we'll see. MCB disc had several MCBish jokes about how T-cells become depressed if their target cell isn't excited to see them....(ok that was really random)...
-I imagine this entry was probably hard to read for all its disorganization and fragments. Whatever! Tomorrow i lok forward to visiting the Lawrence Hall of Science for 117 and an FDA infosession.
-12:26 am: the past couple of weeks have been rather insane, thus this late entry. I know all of you probably want more entries... but unfortunately my fun fun busy busy schedule doesn't allow that... so lets' keep to the real highlights
-saturday, apr24 - TBP District 15 conference. A gathering of NorCal TBP chapters + Cal Poly in the lovely student union at Sacramento State. Mostly boring, although had some fun and interesting conversations with non-berkeley TBP ppl. Conclusions/results from conference: Sac State prof hates us, more work to do on a convention bid, CA A is still the best chapter!!
also sat - EJC/SWE dance aka the mirage. Wasnt much of a mirage to me, but eh whatever. I did plenty of dancing.. now that for some reason i don't care about embarrassing myself in front of large crowds anymore. Mucho food and uh plenty of TBP officers there. The best move of the night.. the "brian dance"
-sunday: 117 project!! fun cutting out paper, printing, posting and assembling the backboard. Too bad the actual stuff isn't done yet!!! (i.e. the actual physical demonstrations). Worked on that from about 11 to 5. Then at 6 went over to Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant for my b-day1 dinner. Organized by the awesome jen, had 11 ppl there: Wen-Lin, Eddie, Karen, Diana, Nathan, James, Po-kai, Jen, Kathy, Heena and of course me. excellent food and sweet honey wine! Thank you guys so much for coming!! It means a great deal to me. Extra special thanks to Jen for organizing it all and getting the tiramisu cake. I'm very lucky to have such special friends.
-monday: bent polishing and my offical b-day. Mike decided my present would be to get the candidates to tie me to the Bent. Unlike last Bent polishing i gave in rather easily, mainly cuz it was HOT. After the Bent was all shiny, i went to history, then home. Then Yeh and David took me out for bday2 dinner at Mel's! Michelle arrived late, and Karen Lee never made it.. but still more awesome friends! I got a very nice poster from Michelle and David and Yeh gave me an interesting card game. After that dinner, i escaped to attend the EJC elections for next year... where i witnessed the acension of Ryan to the presidency, the pushing of Eddie to webmaster and Trent's assumption of Athletics chair! Awesome job Tau Bates! and bioes!
-then came the fun: i was kidnapped (picked up) by the three DIVAS JH, GG and EC (jen, germaine and eileen). I was blindfolded (allowed to see cuz i would get car sick) and let into the gettaway truck (honda civic). To further confuse me the truck (civic) driven by JH went in deliberate circles (got lost). We arrived at the DIVA hideout (Fenton's) were i was subjected to torture (banana split).
-hahah! Thanks so much Jen (again), Germaine and Eileen for taking me out for the ice cream. Even though i didn't get to try the banana special thingy, it was awesome!
-That was by-far the best set of b-day celebrations i've had up here in Berkeley. The last three i've spent with family or a smaller set of friends. It's very interesting to see just how much larger my circle of friends has become since last year. Truly something to remember!
-MT yesterday: BioE117 had a CE130 type problem on it much to my satisfaction. Bioes probably all died because of it, so yay.
-cool a totally happy entry for once...
April 21, 2004 - TBP worries and other worries
-12:26 am: so i've officially selected a date for TBP officer elections.. and i have angst over what will happen with next semester.. i think i need to push ppl into running for positions and start training them. AH wrong things to worry about, especially since the current semester has it's own problems, the most concerning of which is the um lack of a banquet location! Definitely should have been arranged by now, and ideally much earlier in the semester. Bah sometimes i think most of my VP advice was ignored...
-so yet another job thing fell through.. what else is new. Seems like everybody says that we dont' have positions right now, try again later! I feel like a dog chasing its tail; all this energy expended, looking like a complete idiot, going absolutely nowhere. But the analogy is not totally valid, since i assume that dogs are happy while they do that. More and more that decision not to apply to grad school looks like a very bad call (and EVERYONE around me says so too, i really don't understand why ppl thing i would make such a good grad student when i didn't do very much research...)
-and talk about a damper on the semester. I've never really been happy this semester; always have anxiety and constant worry over it. And it sucks. Sucks that i can't enjoy my last semester as fully as i should.
April 20, 2004 - what a monday
-1:20 am: unlike other mondays, today was quite enjoyable indeed. First off, learned about atomic bombs in history (the actual physics behind them and the unclassified designs). Afterward spent an hour or so simply chatting online waiting to go to Ace Hardware to get more stuff for the 117 project. They have like so many springs and random things! That store is awesome... and i never knew it had all those things. Too bad :(
-afterward went to an art store down the way to buy a display board, foam board, and some construction paper. Then we got obsessed with the artsy stuff like pastels, markers, pencils and graphite. Being in there reminded me of the good old days of 8th grade, where i had my first and last art class. Markers being too expensive at the art store, we instead went to of all places, the Albertsons in El Cerrito Plaza to buy them. So we bought them and other junk foods then proceeded to eat at the Macaroni Grille. So strange to eat out at a medium-classy restaurant on a weekday, especially a monday. Anyway, that was kinda cool!
-i have a weird feeling about this next week... and weird as in good and cool things will happen. Don't know why really, but hey let it come.
April 19, 2004 - the interesting weekend
-12:36 am: Friday-saturday was the ACS Relay for Life.. in which i spent from 4:20 pm on friday to 10:45 am on saturday in Edwards Stadium. Quite the sleepless experience in which many interesting things happened. i actually was able to run 1.5 miles without needing to stop (i thought i would have to). i think i walked a total of ten miles (around 40 laps) during my walking shifts. Me and Wen-Lin putting up the small tent brought back memories of fishing/camping trip to Lake Cachuma! Anyway, we somehow managed to get it up and discovered it was quite quite small compared to the other tents. Some ppl had some really advanced looking ones, but then again some groups went without a tent altogether. Other ppl arrived and the whole thing finally got it's start with an opening ceremony. After that we took our shifts, played cards, removed tickets from faces, tried to sleep, and a whole bunch of other stuff. In all i got about 2 hrs of sleep total.
-i managed to solve my situation with buying Ryan at the date auction. I somehow managed to locate the girl i outbid during the Relay and simply offered the date, much to her delight. It somewhat works out for everybody. I will still have the embarrassment attached (not to mention the loss of $65)... but whatever.
-Today went to Germaine's place to work on 117 project. We came up with more specific things to do with our project and even bought some of the stuff at Safeway. Afterwards, Eileen was a lifesaver and took me to the College Ave Safeway, where i did my grocery shopping for the next week or two.
-there less than five weeks left in my college days. It's kinda scary and exciting at the same time, with more weight on the scary part (because i don't have a job). I've not done a good job at all in the search, and it's mainly because i have schoolwork and TBP stuff to take care of first. My hope is that once i'm done with school, i'll have the focus i need to actually pursue something with enough rigor. However, the fact that none of my earlier applications produced anything is quite discouraging. There is small comfort in the news that many other people are having difficulties. It's seems i am in a rather crowded boat (that is sinking). Maybe that email i got from that random person awhile back is true and the engineering profession here is just a resource that is being outsourced.
"Hope is simultanenously your greatest strength and weakness."
April 16, 2004 - chaotic weeks
-1:22 am: these entries are getting rarer and crapier.. oh well. So like from the title of this entry you can guess that the past two weeks have been um quite chaotic. The fluids midterm actually turned out quite quite well... i got 100/100 in fact. The prof had the class give a round of applause without actually pointing me out and that would've been fine, but then Sarah pointed at me during the clapping... WOW now i'm like everyone's enemy.
-last Friday went to Nation's to enjoy some good pie with Kathy and Wen-Lin over some interesting conversations about grad school, law school and RCSA.
-I pretty much blew away the saturday watching the NHL playoffs. Sunday we had the semesterly TBP-HKN bball game (in which TBP won the primary game 12-4). I of course sucked having not played since um i can't even remember. Ultimately ended up with but a single layup and plenty of aching muscles (particular my left quads)
-Mon and Wed ran the TBP E-week table!!
-Tu... the night of craziness that saw me spend $120 on two dates at the date auction... $65 on poor Ryan, who I NEVER intended to actually buy, but took a large risk in trying to get his bid higher. Same thing happened with the other date i bought (um at least a girl :p that time)...
-the whole E-week stuff has distracted me away from jobless problem and that has been a good thing.. since i've been seriously depressed over it. I really dislike having the future in limbo.
April 7, 2004 - what i want for my b-day
-1:02 am: so my b-day comes in like 19 days... a random number to be counting down but whatever... The only thing i really want for my b-day is like a job interview (yeah not even the job itself... need to take it one step at a time...). I don't think anything could make me happier (short of let's say winning the lottery.. which i can't since i don't play...). Even the anxiety of having some job interview to do would be much better than my constant worry... and getting one would do wonders to help restore my shattered self-confidence. So um yeah... if by some miracle of God any recruiters are reading this.... GIVE ME INTERVIEW! PLEASE!! ¡¡¡POR FAVOR!!! ONEGAISHIMASU!!!!
April 6, 2004 - fluidic fun
-10:45 pm: if the divergence of a fluid velocity field is 0, then the fluid flow is incompressible and a stream function exists... if the curl of a fluid velocity field is 0, then the fluid flow is irrotational and a velocity potential function exists... if both div and curl are 0... you have a very boring fluid flow that is steady, incompressible, irrotational, inviscid.... can anyone find me an example of a fluid flow which actually has all of those properties?
-TBP general mtg today was actually a very fun mtg with a rather interesting ice-breaker in which ppl claimed i was hot....(WTF!?). That was followed by some hilarious movie charades then Mexican food. After the meeting a few ppl played Mafia, the classic dorm game which i am generally terrible at.... I was kinda disappointed that i only got to play once, but it's perfectly understandable that people have midterms on stuff to do. I, of course, have the 106 midterm which i was rambling about up there. The next couple of weeks look to be extremeley busy TBP/EJC wise. There's E-Week , Cal Day, the Relay for Life and a whole bunch of events to go to/run. After that in the next week, need to do something for BioE project, run a fundraiser, and attend a TBP conference... then comes the last midterm (more like a final), TBP initiation and finally FINAL exams.... oh yeah and then i enter the world of the unemployed looking for jobs....
April 5, 2004 - fluids studying not going so well
-11:42 pm: i have my fluids midterm on thursday and i'm finding it very difficult to study. Why? I just look at the equations and nothing seems overly hard. Potential flows weeeeeeeee, just do some fun partial derivatives. Navier-Stokes Equations? they only look intimidating! once you know what all the terms mean, they actually aren't so bad. The only weird thing is this similtude and dimensional analysis stuff. I'm not sure how one studies dimensional analysis for a test.
-on the brighter side of things... finally got around to some grocery shopping! I think that was the first time i've been happy in the last couple of days. (SHEESH i've hit rock bottom to be made happy by grocery shopping...)
-one of my roommates started playing metroid prime and is up to nearly the end.... i used his save file to relive a classic battle with Omega Pirate... and i'm currently wondering how i could do against Meta Ridley. Freaking Meta Ridley took me like 10 tries to beat the first time through and i never got the opportunity to try the cheap Wavebuster technique. HMMMM.
April 2, 2004 - it's been awhile
-7:03 pm: because of spring break and the immunology midterm , haven't had time to write anything in this blog. oh well
-spring break seemed consist of doing nothing much other than helping with preparations for my sister's b-day party. I did get a new cell phone and a new $500 pair of glasses which include transitions lenses, sun-glass clip and some other random coatings. My parents' insurances is good enough so that we didn't have to pay a penny. On the negative side, vision in my right eye was slightly poorer than two years ago, when i had my last eye exam.
-Probably the funnest thing about the time that has passed since the last entry was karaoke for Jen's b-day last tuesday. I sang a lot... totally different experience than my first time, probably cuz i was more comfortable with the ppl i was with.
-this week has had sort of a creepy theme to it, the jobless theme. Left and right i overhear ppl talk about how they can't find a job. I got one email from a TBP member who joined and graduated last semester, asking for some industry contact info. Then i get this random ass email from a random person proclaiming that the "profession of engineering has been downgraded to a resource" which is incidentally being outsourced. At the moment i can't help but agree. My job search has been extremely frustrating and has so far produced nothing. As a result, i find myself in a rather pathetic state. i have no self-confidence to speak of anymore and am feeling pretty worthless. I can't even believe in my abilities anymore. FACK who knew 13 A+ 's could be so utterly useless!! It's not a good thing when whenever you have anytime to stop and think you can't help but think what a worthless fuck you are. I'll leave college in May having accomplished absolutely nothing. All i can look forward to is more rejection and an ambiguous bleak future....
March 17, 2004 - soldering
-11:25 pm: took advantage of the new EJC program to put on classes about various engineering things. Today's class was soldering on electric components. Very fun! I had a working thing, but when after i clipped off the extra leads, the thing suddenly stopped working. I probably busted something... probably the transistor. I've had a habit so to speak with breaking transistors. I used to have these electric mini-kits and i would always overload and burn out the transistors.... probably did the same here.
-tomorrow is the 2nd TBP candidate meeting/ 1st general meeting or whatever the hell you want to call it. A bunch of officers are supposed to bring rice cookers tomorrow (and presumably the rice) so we can "save" money. It'll be quite odd for me to be attending bioE117 discussion with a rice cooker... bah whatever.
March 16, 2004 - spring break approaches
-10:11 pm: but it feels like it's here already.... This is what i get for finishing the me106 hwk a bit early, a tad bit of boredom. I suppose i should study for that MCB150 midterm that occurs right after spring break... but the very nature of MCB classes (they are such that you absorb as much as you can in the three days before the test, then subsequently forget it all the day after) nullifies that. So during my TBP office hours (which no one comes to) i worked on some ME106 problem that is due on April 1... A fool i may be but all the officers in that class gladly copied my partial solution :P (which i completed later while waiting for my food at Tako sushi, good thing it turned out right... else i led them all to the wrong solution)
-so today i made an endorsement of two ppl running for ASUC senate. I sorta based it on their party's reputation, APPLE Engineering, which has honestly done much for the engineering community the past couple of years. I didn't however let them use the title TBP President... which i think would make it look like TBP endorses them, which i don't think it can.... so we "settled" on a compromise of TBP member. Of course engineers who know what TBP is, probably know who i am... so it's the same.. but i dunno. At least it's not official. I wish them luck and plenty of help... it's really hard to be elected without being connected to the Greeks/athletes. Hopefully we can mobilize all 3200 engineers, then they should be in easily, but you know the apathy of the engineers.
Ready, steady, can't hold me back
Ready, steady, give me good luck
Ready, steady, never look back
Ready, steady, let's get started, ready, steady go!
The scenery flies by me and appears before me as if it's rolling
Even if I must get desparate, I won't let the target get away
If a map is unreliable, just burn it
Let's grab ahold of the buried truth with this hand
I've come here by running frantically
There is a loud beat so loud it feels like it's going to explode
I hear your voice echoing and calling me
But I have no time to stop here
Ready, steady, go
Please trust me
Translated 2nd opening theme of Fullmetal Alchemist... translated jrock has odd lyrics, no?
March 15, 2004 - a disturbing prediction, sunday at the beach
-11:58 am: if Al-Qaeda was truly behind last thursday's train bombings in Madrid, it would seem natural for us to expect terrorist attacks in the US sometime near the November 2 election. Spain may have been a testing ground for the terrorist groups: terrorize the country right before an election and cause the election to swing to the anti-war party. If it was a test, then Al Qaeda's brass must be giving the green light to an attack near November 2, as Spain's ruling government was ousted in an upset election. Spain's new prime minister elect has pledged to bring home the Spanish troops from Iraq as early as possible. The outgoing conservative Spanish government was staunch supporter of the US-led war, despite a majority of Spaniards being opposed. Polls before the attacks even had the conservative government winning the election, but the outcome was clearly affected enormously by thursday's attacks.
-The stage is similar in the US. Support for the war is eroding. An attack right before the election would seem to put the idea in the voter's head that everything that Bush's program has done was useless as we are still as vunerable, if not more vunerable to attacks. And the war on terrorism has been the centerpiece of Bush's government ever since 9/11. The US should be very wary come late October/early November. If the timeline of Spain is to be followed exactly: morning rush hour October 30, 2004.
-onto less disturbing topics. Yesterday was the semesterly TBP beach cleanup... Repeated what was done last semester with the burying and crazy running into (freezing) water. The water part was a lot more crazy this time though since we did it about 10 times! I was disappointed that no candidates went "all-in,"but hey it's their choice.
March 13, 2004 - Bent before and after... annoyed
-12:50 am: from Bent Polishing on March 12
-before (8:58 am)
-after at 3:04 pm
- i just got back from a very
irritating experience at Freeborn. Sure the Taboo was fun... but ah
so much chaos and disorganization made me very annoyed.... Then as
we were leaving some complete jerks thought i would be fun to trap us
in the elevator... i would have been ok if they had only done it twice...
it got FUCKING ANNOYING AFTER 5 FUCKING TIMES!!!!! so my nasty side
shows up and i say some nasty things and storm out.... I AM NOT SORRY
YOU FUCKS DESERVED IT. UGH i think i need some anger management.
-7:18 pm: views from near the Lawrence Hall of Science
-view toward the Golden Gate Bridge
-view toward Emeryville and the Bay Bridge
-quite a breathtaking view
i must say... look at Berkeley and all its urban sprawl. The campus
looks very small from up there, and buildings look like they are very
close to each other... Anyway what was i doing at the Lawrence Hall
of Science!? I was up there with Eileen to check the place out for the
BioE/ME C117 class project. Had some neat stuff there, particularly this
display which demonstrates the pathlines of fluid flowing past certain
shaped objects. Some other cool stuff.. but other than that the place is
a really really small museum.
-college basketball season is over for the Cal Golden Bears as they lost to Oregon in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament, 87-82. Overall the season was quite disappointing, with probably the only highlight being the defeat of Arizona. Hopefully they'll have a better season next school year!
-speaking of next school year.. i still have nothing in place. Attended an info session about the FDA today... so i'll be applying for that. I think my spring break will consist of learning how to drive and uh applying to numerous jobs... yay friday and weekend very close...
-college basketball season is over for the Cal Golden Bears as they lost to Oregon in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament, 87-82. Overall the season was quite disappointing, with probably the only highlight being the defeat of Arizona. Hopefully they'll have a better season next school year!
-speaking of next school year.. i still have nothing in place. Attended an info session about the FDA today... so i'll be applying for that. I think my spring break will consist of learning how to drive and uh applying to numerous jobs... yay friday and weekend very close...
-9:33 pm: wow 10 days into the month for the first entry.... why? laziness mostly, had a couple midterms etc etc. Highlights of the past 10 days....
Thursday (3/4): Leon visisted after his interview at stanfurd med. Ate dinner with him, Benson, Dave, Daniel and Karen all formerly of Freeborn Hall. Didn't have much time to chit chat as i went bowling immediately after dinner with TBP. TBP bowling was pretty good. Somehow managed a 122 and 94 in the games we played, which is much much better than i usually get. Also embarrassed myself and candidate Zac in DDR at the Albany bowl. OMG i can't play that game for crap!
Friday: overslept.. so i didn't make it to the ME106 discussion i usually attend... After history met up with Leon, Cindy and Adam up in the chemistry plaza. Talked for a bit... then we split up. Leon, Adam and I walked down to LSA to visit a couple labs, then Leon and I went over to another Dave's apt to meet up with Dave, Amber and her roommate Ruth. Played/watched some SNES Tetris (how ghetto) and also played some trivial pursuit. Afterward, Leon and I split up and I was late to a engineering society executive pow-wow. Not too much of a pow-wow since only TBP, HKN and ASME were represented. Was pretty social... talked about many random things. I really thought we were going to discuss issues/business, but not having done so was perfectly fine.
Saturday: went to the Team Chartering E-Futures module for the third time... Best one in my opinion since it is the shortest and also involves building towers with K'nex.
Sunday: spent studying history... bleh
Monday: f******* history midterm and studying for 117
Tuesday: OMG the 117 was a total BIOE test... I WANTED HARD CORE ME STUFF!!! damnit. Oh well. TBP bylaws meeting takes much much longer than i thought it would, mostly cuz ppl wanted last minute changes. But they're all done now and ready to be sent in. After that and officers meeting, went out to dinner with Brian, Ryan, Jen and Wen-Lin at northside La Burrita. Actually we spent like 30 minutes in front of Bechtel discussing Jen's grad school dilemma (which i would MUCH rather have than my job dilemma..) before dinner and then much of dinner on the same subject., but also some other things SUCH AS HOW I AM NOT GOING TO BE IN THE DATE AUCTION. After dinner, Jen, Wen-Lin and I took a trip to the roof of the Gaia building just to show it off, look through the telescope thingy etc. More conversation... but of forbidden topics! Finally day done... seems like it was quite fun filled!
Today: got Prof. Lieu signature on the bylaws so we can now officially send it in. I really hope it doesn't come back all marked up and rejected but we'll see. MCB disc had several MCBish jokes about how T-cells become depressed if their target cell isn't excited to see them....(ok that was really random)...
-I imagine this entry was probably hard to read for all its disorganization and fragments. Whatever! Tomorrow i lok forward to visiting the Lawrence Hall of Science for 117 and an FDA infosession.