Hey every­one! Sorry for the lack of updates lately. There’s some­thing about the con­stant dis­trac­tions of liv­ing at Drama House… I’m almost never on my com­puter any­more. Actu­ally, being in school again may have a small role in that, too.

But since Peggy S “tagged” me, I guess I’ll update. Just be pre­pared for a longer-​than-​usual “yes­ter­day” sec­tion than most people’s.

Ten Years Ago…
I was twelve years old and just start­ing eighth grade at Bernal Inter­me­di­ate School. Sev­enth grade was a tough year for me because I had just moved back to San Jose after liv­ing in Chicago for two years, and the micro­cosm I had left behind at San Anselmo Ele­men­tary, which was just down the street from Bernal, might as well have been in Tim­buktu. I had never really re-​connected with my old friends, and was pretty much a drift­ing loner for sev­enth grade. Luck­ily, around this time, I found a new group of friends in Adam P, Brian G, Chris N, Mike W, and Siavash S, and we would stick together for a good while yet…

Knowl­edge Bowl dom­i­nated my life in school. (We got first in the state and six­teenth in the coun­try one month!) Out­side of class, we had video games, rock and roll, moun­tain bik­ing, and home-​made explo­sives to keep us entertained.

Oh, and around this time, I expe­ri­enced extreme racism for the first time. I was walk­ing to school one morn­ing and hap­pened to be walk­ing next to an Asian girl. There was a group of three white guys behind us who decided it would be cool to throw rocks at us and call us names. It was easy to ignore the names, since I con­sid­ered most of the peo­ple my age idiots any­ways, but I was so freak­ing scared as I saw rocks the size of my fist whizz past my ear. One landed short, bounced off the curb, and hit the back of my knee. That hurt like hell, and I seri­ously con­sid­ered turn­ing around, charg­ing at those guys, and kick­ing the crap out of them. (I had been tak­ing mar­tial arts for sev­eral years already.) But it was three to one, and they were big­ger, and I wasn’t very sure of my skills, hav­ing never fought in a real fight before. (I still haven’t ever been in a real fight.) As I debated it in my mind, the boys stopped on their own as we got close to school.

Funny how that inci­dent sud­denly sprang into my mind as I wrote this… I had for­got­ten about it for years.

Five Years Ago…
I was sev­en­teen, and start­ing my senior year of high school. Again, this was after a move. My dad’s com­pany moved from San Jose to Sacra­mento because they couldn’t afford to pay their employ­ees enough to live in Sil­i­con Val­ley while the tech bub­ble was at its biggest. Our house wasn’t com­pletely fin­ished yet, so my fam­ily was liv­ing with fam­ily friends, down the street from Laguna Creek High.

The first guy I really got to know at Laguna was Lon­son B, and through him, I met David S, Eddie C, Jerry S, Ryan E, Tyler P, and Xuong T. We had some good times with our “study ses­sions” and our Din Fu (“Crazy Tigers”) Triad. (Our motto was, “Not guns, fun!”) Oh, I spent every lunch period in Mr. Pi’s room play­ing chess with Thanh N. He was a mon­ster! I met Chester W, Jeremy J, and Will N this year, too, but don’t remem­ber hang­ing out with them a lot; we got closer in college.

I got in the news­pa­per this year for get­ting 1600 on my SATs. It wasn’t a big deal to me; it felt like any other stan­dard­ized test, which I almost always do well on. I was just glad I made my par­ents so happy. And it sup­pos­edly was like a skele­ton key that would let me into any col­lege I wanted. That was a mis­con­cep­tion if there ever was one. I had set all my hopes on attend­ing Franklin Olin Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing in Boston, but they rejected me because of my extreme intro­vert­ed­ness. They didn’t want good stu­dents. They didn’t even want great stu­dents. They wanted to cre­ate a new mas­ter race that was trained in engi­neer­ing and busi­ness admin­stra­tion and could take over the world with pin-​stripe suits, mechan­i­cal pen­cials, and fiber-​optic lines.

I’m not bit­ter. Really.

One Year Ago…
I had just been kicked out of UC Davis shortly after cross­ing in Alpha Phi Omega. No con­nec­tion between those two events, of course. No, in all seri­ous­ness, I was already well on the road to being kicked out before I decided to pledge. I remem­ber my engi­neer­ing coun­selor telling me she wanted to pick me up and shake some sense into me. I guess I never took Davis very seri­ously… per­haps some­thing left over from my bit­ter­ness of being rejected from the “good” schools.

Kept myself busy with odd jobs like being a chef at Sushi Nobu, which I loved, and work­ing at the ARCO sta­tion on Mace, which I hated. Also did plenty of ser­vice, earn­ing myself the Ser­vice Cow West term. It was fun at first, but there was always a voice at the back of my head nag­ging at me that I was wast­ing my life, while every­one I knew was mov­ing for­ward with their own. This voice got louder as time went on, and I was deter­mined to get myself back into school and fin­ish up a degree, any degree.

It’s funny how as a kid, my par­ents always told me I could accom­plish any­thing I set my mind to. Actu­ally, not just “could,” but more like “will.” They almost expected me to cure can­cer, boot the com­mu­nists out of Viet Nam, and give them enough grand­chil­dren to pop­u­late the moon (after I single-​handedly terra-​formed it into some­thing hab­it­able for humans, of course). Not nec­es­sar­ily in that order. Now it seems like they’ll be happy if I can get a job good enough to sup­port myself and pos­si­bly a wife, in case I ever get a girl­friend that will want to stick around for a while.

Yes­ter­day…
Now to the meat of my post.

Let’s see… I woke up at 8:30, did my usual morn­ing hygiene/​grooming rou­tine. Went on the com­puter really fast to check for press­ing e-​mails. Logged onto Utopia to check on my province. I don’t think I’m going to play it any­more. I feel less inter­ested in it every time I log back on. Had oat­meal and a banana for break­fast, packed myself a lunch of fried rice and ribs, and watched the news until it was time to catch the bus to campus.

Walked through the MU to see if any­one was in CoHo this early in the morn­ing, but no one was. Grabbed a news­pa­per and went to my first class of the day, PSC 101 — Intro to Psy­chobi­ol­ogy. Unfor­tu­nately, the topic of the day was cel­lu­lar neu­ro­science, and there wasn’t much in the way of funny anec­dotes. The pro­fes­sor ridiculed his own lack of artis­tic abil­ity as he scrib­bled axons on the black­board, and I started nod­ding off, so I pulled out the paper and started doing the cross­word. I don’t know if it’s harder or I’m just stu­pider, but I couldn’t get much done.

Stopped by CoHo between classes, some peo­ple were there. I just said hi and topped off my Nal­gene and I was off to PSC 100 — Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy. Didn’t see Clint S, so I sat next to Marissa K. We agree that Prof. Trom­borg is hard to stay awake for. He seems like a good lec­turer, but all he does is lec­ture. If you haven’t had him before, he’s blind, so he just stands there and talks… no walk­ing around, no writ­ing on the board. And for the last two lec­tures, the material’s been really dry stuff… his­tory of psy­chol­ogy… so yeah… it’s easy to doze off. Which Marissa did, dur­ing the video he showed for the sec­ond half of class.

After that, Marissa K, Clint S, and I walked back to CoHo together. Clint S and I dis­cussed Sudoku strate­gies, as I kinda played around with one for the first time dur­ing lec­ture to keep myself awake. Clint S’s friend and I had the same basic algo­rithm, while he uses a tech­nique that he says is faster, but not 100% fool­proof. When we got back to the MU, Marissa K stayed at the aKD­Phi table out­side, and Clint S went home, so I went to CoHo by myself. No one was there at first, and I was very con­fused. Then Peggy S came back, and the two of us went to return some text­books and buy some other text­books. Back to CoHo again, where yesterday’s quote occurred. It’s from when Thu H was try­ing to recruit for Mus­ic­Comm, as well as plan out their meet­ings with Aaron R.

“I want to sing bass!”

- Thu H, when Aaron R was split­ting up the parts to U2 — With Or With­out You.

“I don’t think you can… bass has to do this…”

- Aaron R, who started to sing the beat.

“I can do that!”

- Thu H.

“…”

- Aaron R, con­tin­u­ing the beat, which dropped an octave.

“I can do that!”

- Thu H, still insistent.

“…”

- Aaron R, con­tin­u­ing the beat, which dropped another octave.

“I can do that!”

- Thu H, still insistent.

“Uh… I don’t think you can…”

- Every­one else at the table.

Thu H still wasn’t con­vinced though. I think she still thinks that she has the same range as Aaron R. Oh, while also at CoHo, Kiki K fed me some of the chips from her taco plat­ter. I miss the TexMex Grill.

Went to Peggy S’s non-​verbal com­mu­ni­ca­tion class with her at 4. The pro­fes­sor was really funny. And his Korean sounds really good to me. I have to talk to Sandy, who’s also in the class, to see what a real speaker thinks of it, though. All I have is Korean movies to com­pare to. But yeah… if I get the chance, I think I’d take that class.

After that, time for my last class of the day, PSC 168 — Abnor­mal Psy­chol­ogy. The pro­fes­sor talked about the dif­fer­ent approaches to the treat­ment of men­tal ill­ness, and had an awe­some story about a patient of hers who refused to take her pills. I think it’s both good and bad that my three pro­fes­sors are cov­er­ing basi­cally the same ground right now. It’s nice because they rein­force each other, espe­cially since they all present the mate­r­ial in slightly dif­fer­ent ways. But it’s bad because I tend to tune out stuff I know, and that occa­sion­ally makes me miss new stuff.

Then I caught the bus home. Had din­ner while watch­ing Lost. It was my first time watch­ing it as it aired instead of a down­loaded episode. On the com­puter for some ser­vice stuff, then took a shower and passed out while watch­ing Iron Chef with Peggy S.

Five Snacks I Enjoy:

1. Jello
2. Pud­ding
3. Flan
4. Apple­sauce
5. Yogurt

I don’t know why I like things that come in lit­tle cups so much.
Five Songs I Know All The Words To:

1. Thanh Nien Hanh Khuc (The Viet­namese anthem)
2. Star-​Spangled Banner
3. Jin­gle Bells
4. Creep (by Radio­head, not TLC)
5. Sadie Hawkins Dance (by Reliant K)

All per­sonal anthems at one point or another in my life.
Five Things I Would Do With One Hun­dred Mil­lion Dollars:

1. Buy my par­ents their dream house wher­ever they want
2. Buy my own dream house
3. Put myself and my sis­ters through col­lege and grad school
4. Invest enough in an air­line to be able to fly any­where I want
5. Invest the rest and hope­fully live off the interest

I kinda feel bad for not donat­ing any­thing to char­ity, but if I really could live off the inter­est of my invest­ments, I’d donate my time and skills to char­ity, which I think would be bet­ter.
Five Bad Habits:

1. Messy
2. Poor time management
3. Unfo­cused
4. Spend­thrift
5. Lazy

Yeah, I know… they’re everyone’s. But hey, they are mine, too.
Five Biggest Joys:

1. Spend­ing time with loved ones
2. Learn­ing some­thing new
3. Fin­ish­ing a good book
4. Build­ing something
5. Help­ing someone

Damn I sound like a nerd.
Five Favorite Toys:

1. Inter­net
2. Digi­cam
3. Legos
4. Chess set
5. Fire

Yup… still pretty nerdy sound­ing.
Five Places I Would Run Away To:

1. Japan
2. Metrop­o­lis (Gotham seems cooler, but the crime rate’s a lit­tle too high for my tastes)
3. Eng­land
4. Thai­land (the clos­est I can get to Viet Nam for now)
5. Spring­field

I think I’d just pull a Nemo and go to Dream­land. Never really felt the need to run away before.
Five Things I Would Never Wear:

1. Leop­ard (or any other ani­mal) print
2. A sin­gle glove
3. Lace
4. Sequin
5. A paper gro­cery bag

I was think­ing of putting “Birth­day Fairy Suit,” but I guess it’s a lit­tle too late for that.
Five Favorite TV Shows:

1. 24
2. Invader Zim
3. Simp­sons
4. Lost
5. Bat­man: The Ani­mated Series

For some­one who grew up watch­ing so much TV, I couldn’t really think of many shows.
Five Fic­tional Char­ac­ters I Would Date:

1. Bat­girl (Cas­san­dra Cain, not Bar­bara Gordon)
2. Psy­locke (prefer­ably in Kwannon’s body)
3. Arwen
4. Mara Jade
5. Nikita

I don’t think any of these or even any­one like these are going to pop into my life any time soon.

I don’t really feel like “tag­ging” any­one, so I’ll end with this: And then I saw a naked chick. The End.