After ficb, me, Andy, Roach and Billy sat around and did nothing. Well, we sat around and called each other names. What a great way to spend Friday night.

andy fixing my commenting system:

hey dude, let me know if the colors are too nasty.
i tried to match your blog, but maybe you don't like it. i'm delirious.

andychon!

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What a cute and thoughtful (and single) man. Thanks Mr. President!

"The love of Jesus is at once vivid and generous. All that he has, all that he is, he gives; all that we are, all that we have, he takes."

-Jan van Ruysbroeck

Boy, it feels good to drive again!

Some unexpected things that happened recently:

*Couple days ago, I turned on my computer and discovered that my frequently-used Netscape disappeared from my hard drive
*Midgley's awesome performance at the Cal-USC game (this is a "good" kind of unexpectance)
*out-of-the-blue visit from my bro, Andy and John from Downey (another "good" kinda unexpectance)
*Roach going to the library so early on in the semester
*Rob's crazy fantasy basketball team
*requiring a new throttle for my car
*finding a can of insant-make cinnamon rolls in the way back of my refrigerator
*severely burning them in the oven
*sleeping eight hours almost everyday
*this comment box not working for the past two weeks
*unwanted flour battle
*making Sydney (aka "Baby") and another toddler cry during nursery today =/

Let's see, school has started. For the last time.

Developmental psychology, social psych, EPS 80 and music 20A. The finals for most of my classes are given the week before finals season actually starts, which is really really great news. In almost every semester for the past three and a half years, I've had a really early final and a really late final. The huge gap in between is just agonizing.

Music has been expectantly fun, especially because Slum and Andy are in the class too. So far, we learned how to wave our arms around to different meters like how conductors do, count beats and sing the Do-Re-Me's. Yesterday, the three of us got together to do the homework and completed it in less than five minutes. I wish it was like that for all my classes.

A thought: second semesters are always so different from first semesters, especially if it's the graduating semester. There's a different feel, smell, taste.. a different perspective. Right after we check our last semester grades on telebears, we regard the second semester as the second chance which we use to vow to 'do better' and 'work harder.' How wonderful it would be to hold that same kind of mentality towards things other than school.. things that simply much more important. People, friends, family. God.

If you've seen the movie "With Honors," there's lesson in there that's so true. The main character is Harvard senior who desperately wants to graduate with magna cum laude, but needs to produce an exceptional senior thesis paper. He spends all his time working on his thesis that it consumes him and hurts his relationships with others. Later on, he's enlightened from a bum (go watch the movie) about the things that actually matter: it's not school, but it's life from which you need to graduate with honors.

Although the thought of me graduating college with honors is absolutely laughable, I'd hope to one day be pleased with the way I've lived my life. Not that I should live timidly or so cautiously that I don't step on people's toes, but rather that I do the right things and make decisions without regret and with peace at heart. Thankfully, living my life to the fullest is something I shouldn't worry about, because it's been taken care of by the work of Christ that which already fills lives fully and overabundantly. The gold star sticker for the diploma of life is pasted on already, you can say. I just hope I would remind myself of the chains from which I set free, which would be a motivator like no other to live this life according to His light.

What a tangent. But soli Deo gloria.

Did anyone watch American Idol tonight??

I saw the most amazing/hilarious/horrific thing. The third person that was being auditioned on the show was this guy named Paul Ahn, who was said to have been a marine. He came marching onto the stage, yelling out a bunch of weird, militaristic stuff for a straight minute. It was really weird and got really awkward. He halted and gave a stone-faced salute, at which point he said, "I can do anything. I can rap, sing, dance... "

He proceeded to beat box (which I thought he did pretty well), and then started rapping Seo Tae Ji's "Nahn Ah Lah Yo." In korean. I wonder if he forgot that he was in America. At first, I excitedly thought, "Hey I know that song!!" But the more he rapped, the more I concluded that he sounded like a huge dork. It got really ugly. Besides giving the unanimous "no," I think the judges also wanted to physically hurt him.

Two men looked through the bars.
One saw the mud, the other, the stars.

-Frederick Langbridge

help

Anyone know of any really easy classes to take this semester? Please holla back. =D

Back in Berkeley

I was walking on campus yesterday and I saw a policewoman riding one of those Segway vehicles. You know, that giant electric scooter that Dean Kamen came out with last year. Anyways, I wonder what it would feel like to actually be on one of those. It's equipped with internal gyros that prevents you from falling forwards or backwards, always keeping you and the machine upright. And it moves and turns from the pressures of one's leaning. How cool is that. With its 12 mph max speed motor, I could make it to LA from Berkeley in... 31 hours? Awesome.

Anyways, they're selling them on ebay for really, really cheap. Ha. And apparently, West Virginia was up for sale too. Cool!

The 99-cent store is so wonderful. Not suprisingly, Downey has this really big one that is painted bright blue and purple (there's a chain of these stores all over impoverished cities as mine). I happily bought:

*two packs of two 9V batteries for 99-cents each (EXCELLENT DEAL)
*three packs of nerds for 99-cents
*one bag of strawberry creamsavers for 99-cents
*one bag of raspberry cookies for 99-cents
*good quality crazy glue for 99-cents


Excellent, I can't wait till my next trip there.

Dude, what a great day in the NBA. The Magic won, the Mavs lost, and the Lakers won huge against the Hawks. The Mailman and Shaq-Daddy were not needed today. The score was 113 to 67, the Hawk's second worst defeat in franchise history. Dude, the Hawks were held to only seven points in the first quarter. You Laker-haters can't overlook that and still argue that this team ain't gonna win the championship this year! Medvedenko rocks.

After losing in Vegas, the $1.50 hot-dog and drink combo from Costco tastes so much better.

I need to immortalize a really funny memory through another post so I would never forget.

We had a Downey reunion a couple days ago at BJ's in Cerritos. Almost everyone was there: Jackie, Annette, Jonathan, Steve, Linda, Thomas, Liz, Sandra, Lailah, John, Cindy. (DOWNEY! Oh yea!) Me, Steve and Jonathan were talking about our old band days in middle school, when we would wreak havoc and constantly agonize our band teacher, Miss Keen. And we all played saxophone. That was a freak year when almost everyone played saxophone, proudly overpowering every other instrument in the band. Fun times.

Anyways, we weren't all that good. We were okay, but not that great. Don't blame it on the saxophones. But there was this one time when we were rehearsing outside in the nice weather, practicing the score from Jurassic Park. The song from the scene when the main characters are driving through the island and encounter that giant brontosaurus. Well, our practice was so horrible that during the middle of the song, a bird that was flying in the air about fifty yards away suddenly stopped and fell straight to the ground right in front of us. Literally fell, bouncing once on the ground. It seems that the bird couldn't take much more of our horrible music so it decided to commit suicide. It's unfortunate how we sounded that bad.

Yea well, we laughed for a good ten minutes after that story. I miss band.

It was George and Jenny's marriage this past Saturday. This was the first wedding I've been to where I knew both the bride and groom, so it made me extremely happy to see them happy together. Man, they were so happy. Andy naturally did a fabulous job on the slideshow, considering what he had to work with, hahah.

I also learned a couple things about weddings. For example, when people start tapping on their wine glasses, the bride and groom are supposed to kiss each other. I thought that was so facinating. But after the seventh or eighth time, I think George and Jenny wanted to throw those wine glasses out the window. It was still sweet, nonetheless. I'm gonna make sure to gleefully tap my wine glass non-stop at my friend's wedding receptions.

My little cousins, Chris and Debora, came over today for New Years. Before the family began to eat the traditional korean New Year's meal of mee-yuk-guk, my mom asked Chris (aged 5) to pray for the meal.

The prayer started off nicely as he gave thanks for the food, family, friends, and so on. I was impressed at his improved grammar and new vocabulary skills. Then he started praying about trees. All kinds of trees, including big trees, small trees, palm trees, coconut trees and pineapple trees. Especially the pineapple trees. He mentioned them four times during the span of his prayer.

He continued on, praying for flowers, fruits, buildings, computers, and a whole buncha other stuff that I can't remember. He referred to his beloved pineapple trees one last time and finally said, "Amen." He had a big grin on his face afterwards, probably because he felt really proud of himself.

Hahah, what a funny little guy. Kids really do say the darndest things.


Happy New Years everybody. Hello 2004!