Tuesday I had a chem presentation, Wednesday I had an engineering presentation, then Thursday I had a chem midterm. Which meant I spent the first part of this week working and studying pretty much nonstop. (By the way Lisa, I've been sleeping a lot better now. I blame my lack of sleep over break on the tiramisu I ate and on PMS. Yes, that is my answer to everything. >_> )

But what started off as a terrible week ended with a few awesome days. On Friday my dad drove up to bring me food (I now have 10 cans of chicken broth, 12 cans of chicken noodle soup, 3 cup noodles, 3 chicken pot pies, 2 beef pies, 3 wonton soup packages, 6 cups of yogurt, a carton of lime juice, a bag of shrimp, a bagel, half a loaf of bread, a bag of beef jerky, a bag of dried fruit, and 7 pineapple cakes sitting in my room. Apparently when I say "I need a bit more food" my dad hears "I'm starving to death, save me.") and to make me sign some tax forms. I guess a few years back my parents invested my red envelope money in some start-up, and now they're doing well so I'm 32k richer. O_o

Went to wushu as usual. We were doing belt tests, which basically meant a wushu version of PE fitness testing. It was actually pretty fun though now even after two days I'm still super sore. We started with horse stance punches - so basically how many punches you can do in a minute while killing your legs. I can do 212 punches in a minute! Which pretty much killed my arms. Luckily for the next hour we did mostly kicks (how many kicks you can do in 30 seconds). Then we went onto combos/jumps. Master Fong actually came today and tested everyone one by one. After that we went on to conditioning testing - your standard push-ups and 60-second sit-up tests. I was able to do 22 push-ups and 53 sit-ups... which is less than what I could do in middle school. >_> Gahh gotta work out...

Yeah, we're being tested on forms tomorrow, so hopefully my legs will have recovered by then. In any case, I can't wait to see everyone doing their forms! It's pretty cool seeing how everyone's improved over the semester.

Yesterday was the wushu banquet. I went over to the southside dorms at 5:45 to meet up with the other freshmen so we could take the bus over to Taiwan Restaurant together. And the bus was late... as usual. We took bets on how long we thought the bus would take to get there. Feeling optimistic, I guessed 5 minutes. In succession, the others guessed 6 minutes, 7 minutes, and 8 minutes. One girl guessed 15 minutes, and we were like, no waay the bus can't be THAT late... and guess what? It came in 16 minutes. Knock on wood.

So we got to the restaurant late, just in time for the food to get there. Excellent timing. We ate, and after dinner some of the older members started passing out some reeally old photos. Like black and white old. It's pretty cool how the club has so much history - there was even a picture of the first ever female CMAT all-around champion!

After that the instructors handed out awards. They were really random awards... Like the "Happy Salmon Award" for those who "never complain in the face of adversity" and the "Rising Star" award for the really pro new members. I got the "Ninja Award: Silent but Deadly" because apparently I "don't talk a lot but definitely kick ass." Um, haha alright!

So after awards we left the restaurant but nobody wanted to go home so we went out for gelato! (Even though it was literally 40 degrees out.) Yeah, our entire group, numbering 40-something migrated across the street and crowded into the small gelato shop, terrifying the two guys behind the counter. Hey, at least we brought them good business.

We finished our gelato, and then someone said, "Hey, let's go to yogurtland!" Everyone thought it was a crazy idea - who gets gelato AND froyo in this weather? But by the time we realized the illogic of this we had already walked over to Yogurtland. Oh well, I aint complaining. Yogurtland had this holiday season special where if you buy a tub of froyo totaling more than $5 you get a free t-shirt, so we all paired off into groups of 2 or 3 and each got HUGE cups of froyo, like half gallon size huge.

After that people started dispersing. A lot of people went home, and some people were planning on going over to Alan's (Calwushu alum) house to watch a Beijing wushu team movie. I kinda wanted to go, but my walking-back-to-Foothill-dorms buddy wanted to go back and I didn't want him to walk back alone at night so that was the end of Saturday's wushu adventure for me.

Anyway, I guess it was good that Saturday was basically a fun day because today it was back to business - I've got a 7-page paper (wrote 5 pages today) and a 3-page paper due on Wednesday, two finals on Saturday, and my last final the Friday after that. The finish line is in sight... just one step at a time now, almost there!

YOU TELL THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD THIS IS BEAR TERRITORY

IT'S OUR AXE! IT'S OUR AXE! USC BEAT US AND STANFORD BEAT USC BUT WE BEAT STANFORD!!! AGAINST ALL ODDS, MAN, AGAINST ALL ODDS, EVEN WITHOUT JAHVID BEST THE BEARS PULLED THROUGH AND WON - MIRACLES DO HAPPEN, WE WON THE BIG GAME!

I'm definitely getting tickets next year. I want to be there when we whup their butts again.

This week was quite eventful, between the strike and it being big game week. It was actually quite mild Wednesday and Thursday, but on Friday people stormed the hall where the Chancellor and some other admin bigwigs were. There were 20 to 30 people occupying the actual inside of the building while hundreds more rallied outside. It got to the point where the police had to be called in. Apparently there was even tear gas and beatings involved.

Where was I in the midst of this hullaballoo? Looking for a way around the protesters to get to class. Honestly, I think they were going about it the wrong way. Oh yeah, you care so much for our education, that you pull the fire alarms in all the buildings to prevent people from GETTING that education by being in class. Makes toootal sense.

There were some pretty win moments though. This guy is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSH5GZ_yGQ

So I went to wushu as usual that night. Missed the bonfire rally, but eh, I've got three more years to hit that. I got there early and got into a huge discussion with the other early people about our chances at winning the game. And then one of the guys showed up wearing a Stanford shirt.

TARGET SIGHTED. MOBBING COMMENCE.

A few of the more spirited guys immediately surrounded him and started pointing at him, chanting, "Take off the RED shirt, take off that RED shirt..." And everyone else proceeded to predict the nasty ways he would die if he ran into the bonfire rally people out there while wearing that shirt.

After everyone calmed down, we found out that he's actually a Stanford grad student on exchange with Berkeley. How does THAT work?!

He also said, "They told me that the Cal undergrads were really crazy about this, but I never believed that until now." Haha no kidding.

Later on another guy walked in accidentally wearing a red (non-Stanford shirt). Another "take off that red shirt" chant began, and this time a few guys actually tried to take off the shirt. Luckily for him, they failed. But really, he's a sophomore - he should've known better.

And then we won today! And I just finished my 6 page lab report! Life is good.

Today I went to a panel on how to land an engineering internship.

It's nice that most companies "will hire any major." Buuut of course there's a catch. They'll hire you regardless of your major, as long as you are proficient in C#, JAVA, VisualBasic, Python, html... etc. etc.

So I've decided that I'm going to relearn C on my own. Gotta start somewhere, right? (Well actually I'd argue about the RElearning part, as I never really learned it well to begin with...) Tomorrow I'll go to the student store and get myself a book on programming. Shouldn't be too bad... now that I think about it, C++ wasn't such a bad class - I actually thought the game project was pretty fun. I think the reason why I left the class so disgruntled was because the teacher was never there to answer questions (or for that matter to teach) so I felt like I didn't learn as much as I could've.

Anyway, CS people, teach mee? *cough*Lisa*cough*

For some reason as I was thinking about this, I suddenly felt inspired to make a website.

So here it is:
http://melonduhh.tripod.com/buildingblox/index.html

And no, I did not suddenly learn html in half a day. Tripod has this nifty site builder tool that makes it super easy for even a code-illiterate person like me to use.

Yeaahh... any suggestions for the site?

...from listening to too much music through headphones and playing too much DS. It's nice not having any homework this weekend, but... what's the point if everyone else is busy?!

Oh well, it was a nice break. And then Thanksgiving in a week and a half! This semester just flew by... Seems like I haven't been at school that long, and suddenly the professors are starting to talk about finals.

Anyway, this week was pretty eventful. On Thursday I went to the Taiwanese American Professionals speaker panel event, hosted by TASA. It was pretty interesting - there were speakers from all different fields, from engineering to law to medicine, and even an indie musician. Oh and this guy from Facebook was there. They talked about their jobs, what they do, stuff like that. Apparently it doesn't matter what field you're in - when you're just starting out you'll be working 60+ hours a week (in the case of the doctor, 80+). Which sounds pretty scary... but as the doctor guy put it, "if you're not willing to work hard, you're not going to succeed at anything."

While wandering around the engineering buildings, I happened to see a flyer advertising a seminar about automobile crashes. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to go. I was the first one to get there, so I took a seat and waited for it to start. Soon after, more people came in... except all of them looked old enough to be grad students and there were even some middle aged people. OOPS. Guess it wasn't an undergraduate seminar after all. But it was too late - if I left now, that'd be rude to the speaker. So I sat through the whole thing pretending not to be in the wrong place, and no one said anything. I guess the saying is true - as long as you look like you know what you're doing, people will assume the same. ._.;

As for the seminar itself, it was pretty interesting. I didn't understand all of it, but from what I could tell, the speaker was testing out a new way of documenting and doing research on the statistics of crashes. According to him, we shouldn't be looking at the frequency of crashes, but at the severity of them. Because with the present system, we're putting all the resources into preventing crashes at sites where there are a lot of fender-benders, while neglecting the sites where fatal crashes rarely, but do happen.

Not that I'm ever going to use that information. But it's good to know. Here's something a bit more practical: tell your parents to be careful while driving on the S-curve of the Bay Bridge - there's been 49 crashes in 53 days or something like that.

Today after wushu me and two others on the CMAT logistics team went over to last year's logistics head's house to take inventory of stuff. And we found CMAT posters from a looong time ago. There isn't any use for them anymore, so I kept one, and now I have a CMAT 2005 poster hanging on my dorm wall, for inspiration.

"Calwushu consumes my soul." (Taken from the facebook profile of one of the calwushu seniors.)

Seriously, you know you're obsessed when during math lecture you suddenly find yourself thinking about how to fix the choreography in the longfist form. Every waking moment now I'm training, if not physically, then mentally, picture the forms in my head, visualizing how I want it to look in execution. And even when I try to get to sleep, I'm going over the movements of the butterfly twist, trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I think I've improved. At least, I can get through a whole section of my form without Liz (the first Calwushu person I met, and my unofficial mentor now) telling me to stop and fix a million and one problems. But I've still got a long way to go. My speed is still mediocre, my stamina needs a lot of work, my aerials are too low, and I still can't land inside-jump kick straight into splits. My arms are too weak to get through the entire broadsword form without slowing down by a noticeable amount, and I have yet to figure out how to do butterfly with a staff without either hitting myself or dropping the staff.

But I'll get there eventually. I hope.

I think I need some motivational music. This should do. It's practically the Calwushu theme song.




//EDIT: If anyone wants to go running over Thanksgiving Break with Kay and me, comment here or let me know in some way or form. We're most likely driving over to San Antonio to run on those trails, and yes, I'll arrange carpools.

After my last post, I've had quite a while to cool my head a bit. Not to mention get out of PMS phase. Seriously, I'm getting sick of this monthly cycle of normal -> angry/depressed -> normal... not to mention every time it's that time of month I get bad cramps and I tend to be a lot more tired, which does nothing to help me through classes and then wushu practice. It's times like this I wish I were a guy...

I've come to the conclusion that I'll just have to accept that nothing ever goes the way you want them to, and life is a heartless bastard who will kick you when you're down to eliminate those who aren't strong enough to survive. Cynical viewpoint, yes, but I believe it's close to the truth.

Actually (jeez, this is third time I'm going back in this post to edit it) I think I'm just a control freak. Now that I look back on it, every time I've been really worked up about something is when things were going out of my control. When I fail a test or something, I don't blow up about it because I know that it was my fault and I could've done better if I tried harder. When I get cheated by various outside parties I tend to get mad more because it makes me feel like there is no justice in the world, life is not fair, blah blah blah all that angsty stuff. I get angry that all the work I put in, all the time I took meticulously planning how I was going to proceed, was for nothing, that I have to start over at square one as if all that effort was worth nothing.

When I put work into something, I want some return on my investment. I want to see that I actually accomplished something, that my time was not wasted. Is that so much to ask?

Back to the control freak thing, I've noticed that in the past whenever I had a group project, I'd subconsciously attempt to take control of the group, for better or for worse. Maybe it's partly an issue of trust - when I'm thrown together with a bunch of people I don't know that well, the only person that I know for sure I can rely on is myself. (Does that make me sound like an arrogant prick?) But also, I don't want to let someone else grab the reigns, get bad results for the whole project, and then regret not doing anything to make it better.

It's not just about school though. I remember when I was little I was playing outside with some of the neighborhood kids. We were playing a made up game where each of us has some territory (some portion of the court) and the goal is to conquer the entire court... something like that. Basically your average RTS except in real life. We randomly picked two teams, and since I was the oldest on my team, they elected me team captain. I don't really remember the details, but as the game continued, I was able to get every single other kid on the other team to join my team, leaving the other team captain alone to fend for himself. If I had one word to described myself, it would be manipulative. Looking back, I feel really bad for doing what I did - no one likes being alone, and that kid was probably no exception. Just seeing how seriously I took a simple game, how I seized the opportunity to take control of the whole situation when it arose even as a kid, it's frightening. I hope I never gain any real power in life, because I fear what I will end up doing with it. I guess I'm a bad person after all...

Wow, that was a long tangent. Anyways...

So I went and looked up classes again, and turns out it's okay that I wont be able to sign up for that humanities class, because I've still got a few back-up plans - I could take Chinese100BX (advanced chinese for mandarin speakers... I had to take an online placement exam for this) and Chinese 158 (Reading Chinese Cities) which would together fulfill two out of five of my minor requirements and the upper div humanities req for my major. Or, I can take History C138B (The American Immigrant Experience) which would fulfill two parts of my major humanities req. Only problem is for the former I'd be taking 19 units total, and for the latter the average grade is a B... But whatever, at least I still have options.

We started practicing our C-team group set this week. So far it seems to be going well. My teammates are all pretty cool, and we work together really well. Like, we were able to synchronize each move after practicing around five times. It's nice that we're all dedicated and go to practice regularly unlike half the A and B teams. It's also nice that unlike some people on the other teams, we're not all about winning. We had our first team dinner at Chipotle the other day and we all agreed that "if we find ourselves winning at the expense of having fun, we're doing something wrong" as one guy put it so eloquently. So yeah, should be a good year.

Someone up there hates me.

So apparently people with higher class standing gets higher priority for choosing classes. Which means since I have 59.5 units from AP's and community college, just half a unit away from junior standing, I should get to pick classes fairly early, right?

WRONG.

By an unfortunate turn of events, our lovely admin processed my units only AFTER my telebears (course selection system) appointment was set. And with my terrible luck my date was set LATER than the majority of the freshman class.

Oh, and it gets better.

Since technically I'm not a freshman anymore, (or a sophomore apparently) I'm forbidden from signing up for freshman/sophomore seminars. So I don't get the advantages of having almost junior standing but I do get the red tape that comes with it. Great, right?

So now I'm shut out of the physics professor I wanted because all 150-something of the spots are taken and there's no waitlist. I'm also forced to take a chem lab time I didn't want because every other time is full, which means I wont be able to take that humanities course that would've fulfilled a breadth requirement for my major and a requirement for my minor.

Seriously, I am this close from throwing something out my window right now. I did NOT work my ass off junior year when I could've been playing on my brand new Wii just to get screwed over by some shitty class picking system that gives me nothing at the times and with the professors I want.

Fuck bureaucracy. Fuck the system. Fuck my life.

 Wow, last night was the first time I slept ten hours straight in like... years. That was amazing. Maybe it had something to do with daylight savings. Now I'm totally energized for wushu later today.

Past few weeks have been pretty exciting... Halloween, not so much, but oh well.

I went to my first ever internship/career fair - note to self: do not wear a bright sweater to events like these. Half the people were dressed up in suits (probably business majors), a lot of other people were wearing collared shirts and slacks, and then there were a few like me. But I guess it's all good because the recruiters for the engineering jobs didn't seem to care too much about what you were wearing anyway. 

I talked to a few people are by far the more interesting was the guy from Lockheed Martin. They have an aerospace/physics division! From what I could tell, their internships need quite a bit more coursework done than I have, but there's always next year. At the end of his talk he gave me a biodegradable business card with seeds embedded into it that will actually grow into trees if you water it. That was pretty cool.

Last weekend my engineering seminar instructors took us all over to Cheeseboard for dinner. If you guys are ever in Berkeley, you HAVE to go to Cheeseboard. Seriously, that was the best pizza I've ever eaten. After that we went across the street for gelato, and I can honestly say that was also the best gelato I've ever eaten. (Nevermind that that was the only gelato I've ever had...) We hung out for a bit, had nerd talk. A bunch of guys started a heated conversation about the merits of Windows 7 (probably EECS people), while another group pondered over the difference between gelato and ice cream. One of our instructors whipped out his iphone to look it up, and immediately some guys crowded over to rave over the iphone and whatever app they were trying to make. It was pretty funny - there was no way anyone could mistake our group for anything but Cal engineering kids.

Oh, and super-pro-cello-guy is in my class! I never realized it until like... a few weeks ago when we happened to sit next to each other, and he asked me, "Hey, you play piano, right?" Wow, small world. We talked about music for awhile on the walk back to campus. Turns out he started learning cello when he was 9, and then joined one of those top-tier youth symphonies that go on international trips and stuff. That's worship status right there.

Skipping to Friday... it was the day before Halloween. One of the wushu instructors was sick. So for basics instead of doing drills we learned basic combos from really random styles. And when I say really random, I mean like, not just contemporary and traditional northern, but also southern, mantis, and drunken. Watching everyone attempting to do drunken at the same time was hilarious. Our instructor was like, "I really hope no admins walk in now... and see our 90% underage club stumbling around like a bunch of drunks..." Haha, someone should've taken a video.

Oh yeah, almost forgot - on Friday all the Asian clubs got together and held a mini night market. It went from 4 to 7, so it's wasn't really a NIGHT market, but oh well. Obviously there was no way they could make it like an actual night market, but at least they had good food. Not exactly cheap, but at least not ridiculously overpriced *COUGH*dormfood*COUGH*. I had (good) dumplings for the first time in over a month. And I was happy.

So Sherry and I started this thing where every Saturday we homework marathon after lunch until... whenever we're done. Anyone's free to join us - we've had Yian, Stephen, my suitemate Linda, and this random guy from my math class and Sherry's physics class join us various times. It's not as bad as it sounds - working on stuff for hours on end is torturous by yourself, but with other people around you it's a lot more motivating, and at times kinda fun. Anyway, we weren't about to call this week's marathon session off, because Sherry has 3 midterms and a paper due this week, and I have a paper and a project proposal. So we were pretty much just doing homework while half the dorm was partying. I say half, because the other half was like us. But it's not like we missed out on much though - apparently Halloween parties in college are all about getting wasted, and the trick-or-treating groups were all on south side, too far from our dorm to walk to at night.

But to make up for the lack of candy, Sherry and I are planning on making a Safeway expedition today to get the after-Halloween sale, so it's all good.

 I've decided I'm not going to double major, one because I'd have to take around 20 units every semester for the next four years, and two because apparently there's no point in double majoring if I'm going to grad school anyway. But I AM going to attempt a Chinese minor. Shouldn't be that hard, since it only requires 2 years worth of Chinese proficiency and five upper divs.

Application period is setting in. Junior year was SATs and APs. Senior year was college apps. But all that pales in comparison to the flood of apps everyone seems to be filling out in college. I'm currently working on an "externship" application. Basically it's for a short job shadow/internship with a Cal alumni over winter break. There's an interesting start-up in LA and a huge engineering firm in SF that I'm considering applying for. What I'm worried about it that everything requires a resume... and now I'm realizing just how pathetic my resume is.

It seems like a ton of other engineering freshmen already have either research experience or internship experience, or all of the above. And what do I have? A year long stint tutoring middle school and high school students, and a bunch of random club/extracurricular stuff that has nothing to do with anything. Sure, I'm well rounded, but does anyone really care?

Well other than that, I'm been working on an education abroad app for an intensive language program in Beijing this summer. This is actually the reason why I'm thinking of minoring - after completing the program, I will have already completed half the requirements. But of course first I gotta get in...

So, good news - I got on the wushu collegiate team. C-team, to be exact, but quite frankly I'm just glad to have made it on any team considering 30 to 40ish people tried out. Bad news - I have to quit concrete canoe paddling. I'm still involved in the engineering groups, like the fluids analysis team, but I just can't eke out enough time in my schedule to fit in four paddling practices plus one gym workout a week. If only a day had twice as many hours... (Or if only I could function on no sleep...)

Righto, off to level up. Join my ninja team!

 We got to practice wushu in the mat room today. So I decided to bug one of the upperclassmen to teach me butterfly twist. After flopping on the mat several times, I have now progressed from landing on my left shoulder to landing on my face. >_ob

The weather's been getting colder lately, and we still haven't figured out how to turn on the heater. I tried turning the knob next to the big white box in our suite common room today, which caused some strange hissing noise to emit from the box. My suitemate jokingly asked if it was going to explode, and then quickly turned it off before we could find out.

I went to my first Cal Community Music meeting this week, and it was pretty cool. We each played a song (if we wanted to, they didn't force us). I decided to play the Mario theme and a few measures in, some of the guys joined in! One on the second piano, one on flute, and one on cello. It's definitely more fun playing music with other people... but seriously, those guys are hecka talented. None of them are music majors, but they were able to join in without sheet music, probably never having played the song before, and playing in the RIGHT KEY. I'm jealous. I wish I had perfect pitch.

The flute guy improved on the flute with one hand while playing piano chords with his other hand, which was amazing. The guitar people (there were three of them) played some random rock.

And then the other piano guy played Chopin's Fantasie-Improptu. After hearing that, I found myself wishing that I had brought some of my Beethoven and Chopin books. I only brought my FFX and Princess Mononoke piano collections and some random sheet music because I thought that's all I would want to play. But I realize that I really miss the challenge of classical music. You can look for the most complicated version of Simple and Clean or Bratja, but it simply pales in comparison to some Beethoven piano sonata that takes 10 minutes to get through... in Allegro. Well, at least I know what I need to pack next time I go home.

Yeah, I've got another chem midterm on Tuesday. Which means I should sleep soon.

(Btw if any of you are interested, TPP is getting revived. Yes, the OLD forum that got abandoned after the second one was created. http://z15.invisionfree.com/Prancing_Pony/index.php? )

 Nothing too exciting has been happening lately. Or maybe by now I'm so used to the Berkeley lifestyle that the extraordinary has ceased to amaze me. Okay, maybe it's now that bad, but I'm pretty sure if I went back to Cupertino now I'd be pretty bored.

I've been doing a bit of exploring lately. Yesterday I decided to go running in the hills behind the stadium. It took me awhile to find a trail that didn't end 30 feet in at some druggie's trashed camp, but I finally found one that seemed to go on and on. After awhile it kept getting narrower and steeper until I was on my hands and knees going up a "trail" half a foot wide. I guess a sane person would've turned back, but I just thought, this is clearly man-made, so it has to go somewhere. No one makes a trail to nowhere unless they're high.

Eventually I burst out onto an actual respectable looking trail, startling some old ladies on a leisurely morning stroll. I kept running for a bit and eventually found the Fire Trail of Berkeley.

Either I'm really out of shape, or Berkeley's fire trail beats Cupertino's fire trail five times over into a bloody pulp. I was so tired by the time I got to the trailhead, that I only made it up the hill and down the trail for about five more minutes before I decided to turn back.

=/ Running by myself is kind of unmotivating. But everyone I meet is either too pro for me, injured, or not interested.

Oh well.

On another random note, I saw a squirrel the other day. I found that when I walked toward it, it didn't run away - it just kept staring at me. And then when I starting walking away, the squirrel followed me. Meanwhile some old guy walked past muttering, "Someone's been feeding the squirrels..."

Also, yesterday was depressing. The QB needs to learn how to throw. At least Cal Band made a good showing.

Yeah, I don't feel like typing much. Too much typing after that five page technical report for Engineering 10. Who knew engineers had to write so much?

 1. If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.
2. Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you. In short: OBEY. NO TAG BACKS!

Tagging: deformed_cookie, arbitraryster, blobofboredom, saranakins, Ann and Vanessa (who I know for a fact read this), and... that's all, Yolanda tagged everyone else already. O_o

Who sleeps in bed next to you?
my stuffed penguin

What's one of the strangest things that has ever happened to you?
The year when I dressed up as a wiimote for Halloween, people kept walking up to me and pushing my buttons.

What kind of magazines do you read?
Nintendo Power, Newsweek, Popular Science, Runner's World, Harper's, Scientific American

If you could see one band in concert right now, any band, dead or alive, which would it be?
How about artist? I want to see Guang Liang. =]

What's really creepy?
Walking around Berkeley alone at night.

What colour socks are you wearing?
none

What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Wuxia shows, haha

Where would you like to go right now if you had enough money?
Tokyo, more specifically Akihabara

What are you most excited for?
A lot of things... collegiates tryouts I guess

What websites do you always visit when you go online?
gmail, lj, calmail, onemanga, facebook

What was the last thing you bought?
dinner

What's your favorite season?
summer/winter

Does the weather affect your mood?
Yeah, cloudy days are depressing

What is your zodiac sign?
Taurus

Do you want to learn another language?
Yup, though probably not until I'm native-fluent in Chinese and semi-fluent in Japanese

What are 5 things (not people) you can't live without?
water, food, bed, laptop, books

Do you have any siblings?
Yes

What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
Teach me how to use a chain whip!

What's your earliest memory?
Reading my cousin's ninja turtle comics (or rather, looking at the pictures)

Say something to the person who tagged you:
I don't think I ever told you - I just watched Cape No. 7 recently, and it was SO GOOD. DUDE, NEED SHEET MUSIC NAO.



Yeah, so I just got my first math midterm back. I would say I got owned, but considering some people got around 30%, I think I'm doing reasonably well.

I don't think I've exercised this much since cross country. Wushu on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, running with the Cal Running Club on Saturday, and paddling practice with Cal Concrete Canoe today, all while walking more than 3 miles up and down the hills of Berkeley every day. And with all this physical activity brings a soreness that seems like it will never go away. My legs, arms, even my neck is sore, and I'm almost constantly hungry too. But anyway...

Wushu is getting more intense, if that's even possible. Collegiate try-outs are starting in October, so work-outs are getting ramped up to the point where I can barely keep up with the advanced class. On Friday we did conditioning that consisted of doing squats with someone sitting on your shoulders (that was okay), leap-frogging over everyone in succession (that was okay until I got to the super tall guy whose back goes up to my shoulders when he bends down), and going down into a bridge and getting across the gym in that position (that was NOT OKAY. I literally collapsed in the middle of the gym and couldn't keep going because my arms and back were killing me. Time to go work out...). That which does not kill me only makes me stronger. Let's just hope this doesn't kill me...

Yesterday I went for my first run with Cal Running Club. I was expecting something like MVXC, with some really fast people and some people more my speed. It ended up just being me and five really fast people. We drove up into the hills and did a "relaxing" long run of 8 to 10 miles. Actually, I did only 7 miles because by the time I hit 3.5 miles, everyone else had already reached the 4 or 5 miles turnaround mark and was coming back. The upperclassmen were all really nice and stuff, but I kinda wish there was somebody closer to my speed in the club...

After today, I can cross learning how to paddle a canoe off my to-do list. This morning some other freshmen and I got picked up from the dorms by the old Concrete Canoe paddling team who drove us over to the Berkeley Aquatic Park (which is really just a large salt-water pond). They gave us a crash-course on how to paddle and how not to flip over, and then we pushed off from shore and paddled around for about two hours. It's actually really relaxing paddling around in a canoe, watching ducks swimming across your path, feeling the spray on your arms as you cut through the water. It was really fun learning how to paddle and I'm definitely going back next week.

Between physically beating myself to a pulp, I went to several talks that were very interesting. On Wednesday the Society of Women engineers had a representative from Raytheon (a company that develops cutting-edge technology used mostly in military equipment) come to talk about what they do. Making stuff for the military may not be the best choice for bettering the world, but the stuff that they make is undeniably cool. They're currently working on developing an exoskeleton that could enhance the movements of human beings. Just strap yourself into the suit and suddenly you have super strength while retaining the agility you had without the suit. Another project they're working on is some sort of mini-SDI type system that can be installed into military tanks. The sensor would then be able to tell when a missile is about to strike and shoot its own missile to intercept it. Screw peace, sign me up! (I say this with utmost unseriousness.)

On Thursday the department of east Asian studies held a day-long event called Dynamics Across the Taiwan Strait, about, well, that should be self-explanatory. In the afternoon the ex-VP of Taiwan came to give a talk, but I couldn't go to that because I had a math discussion :( so I just listened to the talks in the morning given by very intelligent people with PhDs in Political Science. I had to write a reflection on it for my UCT Decal, so if you're interested, you can read it below.

( Of language and politics... )</div>

I think I finally realize why people say classes at Berkeley are hard. It's not the material that's hard, it's what they expect you to do with the material you learn. Oh well, it's still not as ridiculous as Birdsong's class.

So we have our first chem midterm in two days. Yes, we're having a midterm before the other UCs even start. What is this?! Anyway, I went over the practice tests from the previous years. One I think I did okay on, one I totally bombed. But apparently that year everyone bombed it so it was curved down really low. So maybe I'm not that unprepared. We had a two hour review session today and I knew almost everything the GSI talked about, so maybe I'll be okay. God, I hate how one test is worth like 10% of your grade.

But enough about chem.

Berkeley has this thing called a "Decal." Basically it means "Democratic Education at Cal," or in plainer terms, classes taught by other undergrads. I decided to join a class about US-China-Taiwan Relations, because well, I've heard my parents ranting about one political thing or another all my life, and maybe, just maybe I should learn a thing or two about what they've been talking about. (Wow, that sentence had a lot of commas.) Our first class consisted of just introductions, ice-breakers, etc. Turns out a good number of the people taking that class are like me, ABCs who are completely culturally illiterate when it comes to stuff like that. But some are taking the class because they're majoring in Chinese, International Relations, or they just thought the class looked interesting and decided to give it a try. We didn't do much that class, but I think we'll have some really interesting discussions to come.

And to continue my wannabe-fobbyness, I went to the first TASA meeting with Kimberly and Rosette. It's more of a social club, really. Future activities include Bowling, Night Market (they get together with all the other Asian clubs and hold a mini-night market on campus), and an annual retreat at Santa Cruz (Kay! *poke*). There's also going to be talks where Taiwanese American business people come and give us info on how to be successful people. But the important part is, we got free fried rice and tofu. Best Asian food I've eaten in awhile. (Yeah, the mass produced packaged sushi they sell at the Bear Market just isn't cutting it.)

On a random note, the other day after wushu I came back to my dorm to find my roommate getting together a froyo expedition. Never one to pass on good froyo, I heartily agreed to join despite it being 10:30 PM and freezing outside. Thus began a fast march a mile down the road to reach the froyo place before it closed at 11. It was interesting. We saw a lot of hobos along the way sleeping in front of the stores. But it's okay, we didn't get mugged.

The first full week of instruction is over, which means clubs are going in full swing. Back during Welcome Week we had this thing called the Calapalooza which is basically Berkeley's version of Club Day. Except better, because the food is FREE and practically ALL the major clubs/organizations of campus are out there, available to answer questions and recommend clubs to prospective members.

I guess I was sort of remembering how much I regretted not joining certain activities from the very beginning in high school, so I went just a little overboard in signing up for about 15 clubs in one go. Which is not good because unlike high school clubs, college clubs expect you to do more than just show up at meetings, but I'll get to that later. I ended up signing up for Calwushu, but you knew that already; The Berkeley Project, a community service club; CalPIRG, an organization that comes up with initiatives in an effort to better society; TASA, Taiwanese American Student Association; Cal Running Club, self explanatory; SWE, Society of Women Engineers; Cal Community Music, a group that plays music for senior centers and other places; Cal Concrete Canoe, an engineering competition team that competes against other schools to see who can build the best canoe out of concrete; SES, Students in Engineering Science. I put my email down for a few more, but later realized it was impossible to fit them all into my schedule...

At this point I'm kind of glad half my classes are practically review, because it looks like I'll be spending a lot of time on club activities. The biggest time suck is definitely wushu, at 3 practices a week for 3 hours each, plus an optional open practice for 2 hours on Sunday. But this is also the one club I'm absolutely determined to be involved in no matter what. I looked up some stats online, and at the moment, CalWushu is the reigning champion in US collegiate wushu. I want to be a part of that greatness and help the team move forward (but mostly I just want to make sure we don't lose to Stanford or UCLA ._.), and to do that, I plan on attending every practice and every optional practice until I can pull off some of that crazy stuff they put on the degree of difficulty charts. (720 B-twist into splits?! ...no, I think I'll aim for something saner...)

During our first Berkeley Project meeting, we were put into committees depending on our interests. I signed up for the Event Planning Committee and Sherry kind of got roped in because she was standing next to me... (sorry, Sherry ^^;) So basically what we're doing now is soliciting various food places around Berkeley for donations which will be used to feed the volunteers come project day. When I heard this, I was really surprised that they were actually willing to give new untested freshmen such a responsibility. But then again, we are mostly legal adults now... I still have trouble wrapping my mind around that. So whereas high school clubs don't expect much out of their stupid ignorant freshmen, college clubs expect their freshmen to start contributing right away. It's rather intimidating.

We haven't done much else in any other clubs than have info sessions so far, but I've got a lot of stuff planned for this upcoming week, so that wont be true for long. Busy, busy.

So I've finally found some time to get around to this (mostly because the dining commons don't open for breakfast on weekends grr). It's been a busy few days, but in a good way. Each day basically consists of going to class, coming back to the dorms to do homework, going to some club meeting(s), and then sleep. Anyway, first impressions...

Chem1A: Introduction to Chemistry. The stuff we're learning now I already learned in Chem H, but despite that this class is far from boring. The professor sort of reminds me of Platt (even though I didn't have her, I'm basing this off the few APUSH review sessions we had with her). She's got a ton of energy and enthusiasm for her subject that just makes you get into it too. Her explanations are ten times more clear than Moore's even though she's covering material five times faster. And she does cool demos in class too. Like yesterday, she blew up bubbles! One of her assistants formed a continuous stream of hydrogen bubbles while she blew them up with her fiery stick. It was awesome.

E10: Engineering Design and Analysis. So far we've had just two lectures - one on what engineering is, and one on the history of engineering. Sounds dull, but the professor for this class is awesome too and makes everything interesting. Next week we get split up into modules depending on our preferences. I'll be joining the civil/environmental engineering module which will work on solving the problem of how to create a reliable water supply for astronauts spending an extended period of time in space. One point of complaint though - the homework is really hard. We're supposed to explain in technical detail how the locator function on a cell phone works, and how it relates to the enhanced 911 policy. How am I supposed to know that?? And I can't find anything online either...

E98: How to Survive Berkeley Engineering. This seminar is basically just a help-group for engineering majors. This should be useful.

Math53: Multivariable Calculus. I never though I'd say this, but now I'm glad we lost our talents in Deruiter's class. Because since he covered a ton of extra material, I already know the basics for half the stuff on the syllabus. On a random note, the professor is this crazy guy who I could totally imagine being a Star Wars geek 30 years ago.

R5A: South Asian, Great Books of India. This class is pretty interesting. We're currently reading Jatakas stories, which are tales concerning the Buddha's past lives before he became the actual Buddha (they call him the Bodhisatta at this stage). The first story we read was about the Bodhisatta in the form of a monkey. So one day the king discovered that there were mangoes in the forest. He brought a huge battalion of men to go look for them, and when they found the mango tree, he saw that there was a horde of monkeys already occupying it. The king wanted his mangoes, so he ordered his men to shoot the monkeys down. When he heard this, the Bodhisatta-monkey used his own body as a bridge from that tree to the next, allowing the other monkeys to escape. When the king saw this, he was touched by the monkey's generosity and offered the monkey a place in his palace where the monkey stayed and advised the king until death. Interesting stuff.

Calwushu. I've had two open gyms so far, and have come back sore each time. But I guess that's a good thing. Joining Calwushu is probably the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of martial arts improvement. They have official practices 3 times a week at 3 hours each and one open practice in the mat room for 2 hours. Which adds up to a lot of exercise (meaning no freshman 15 hopefully). It's a lot more organized that MAC, but I guess I should expect that, this being a college club and all. There's an actual instructor there to teach the beginners, and sometimes even Master Bryant Fong (who is apparently really good) comes to teach. For most of the time, the intermediate/advanced group just peer-evaluates each other, which is more helpful than it sounds because we've got some legit pros here. There are guys who can do butterfly twists, 720 outside kicks, aerials while spinning a spear... It's amazing, and I definitely look forward to learning from them.

Dorm status. I ended up in a triple room in a four room suite. I've got an English major and a super-pro-at-violin prospective music major as roommates, and we've gotten along pretty well even though our interests sort of diverge. Not much else to say about this, actually.


And it's really hot here. Must be a heatwave. Has it hit Cupertino too?

I finally got back on Saturday, and it's a sign of how much I've gotten used to Taiwan that it felt so strange to be home. For one thing, the silence - I have to keep slapping my head to convince myself that I'm not going deaf. In Taipei there were always buses driving on the roads, street-side vendors shouting to attract the attention of potential customers, some mother in the next apartment spanking her kid... here it's like my ears are perpetually plugged. It's a lot colder here too. Which is a good thing. I've had quite enough of breaking a sweat just sitting outside for two minutes. But I'll definitely miss the food, the cheap stuff, maybe even the lifestyle. It grows on you, being able to take public transportation everywhere, trying a new restaurant everyday, living in a city with so much to do.

I feel as if I should make some concluding post, so I've decided to take all the interesting places I went to this trip and put them together into a mini-travel guide. If you're ever bored in Taiwan (which you shouldn't be), let this be a reference for you to start from. And if you like what I like, you'll probably like the places on this list.

Without further ado, here it is (in alphabetical order grouped by city):

Kaohsiung:

Dream Mall - Think 8 Valley Fair's stacked on top of each other. This place is HUGE and has just about every type of store imaginable, from games to food to clothes to souvenirs.

World Games Stadium - It's an amazing building. Just go there and look at it.


Kenting:

Kenting night market - This one's basically a street about half a mile long. Why do I like this one? Because I was able to buy freshly made froyo and cheap shorts here. Most of the shops here sell beach clothes and flip-flops though there are a few shops selling higher end clothing which *cough* my cousin promptly went into. (Figures... he wont buy anything but the "best," best being most expensive...) In terms of food, there's a lot of strange seafood and tons of drinks.

National Museum of Marinebiology and Aquarium - More fish than Monterey Bay Aquarium, and cheaper admission too.


Tainan:

Buddhist temples - If you like learning about history, you'll love Tainan. As the old capital of Taiwan, there's a ton of historical sites to be seen, including the multitudes of Buddhist temples. Just make sure you get a guide because it's really easy to get lost in the maze of alleyways and back entrances.

Chihkan Tower - Again, a great place for history geeks like me. This was the old capital building, well-preserved and full of interesting displays inside.


Taipei:

Bitan - Take the Danshui-Xindian MRT line down to Xindian and you'll be at a huge river where you can go ride a boat, fish, or just sit down, order a nice cold smoothie and enjoy the view. I heartily recommend the caramel pudding icee.

Chengping Bookstore - This is pretty much the Taiwan equivalent of Borders here. Not only do they have just about every genre of books you'd ever want to buy (mostly, but not all in Chinese), they also sell CD's and DVD's. Great place to pick up some cheap-ish anime and manga.

Daan Forest Park - I like this place mostly because it's a great place for running in the early morning (early as in before 7 because after that it's too hot). The park is at least a square mile, making it practically a forest, hence the name. On the northeast border there's also a skating rink and playground.

Guandu Nature Park - This is a nature preserve on the northwest border of Taipei, perfect for taking a walk or birdwatching.

Mosburger - Mosburger is a fast-food chain store originating from Japan. Why would I like a store selling fast-food? Because it's GOOD. The burgers aren't as oily as American fast food, yet somehow tastes even better. Flavors include your typical cheeseburger and fishburger, in addition to more unusual ones like octopus and shrimp. (I personally recommend octopus.) There's even a separate section on the menu for rice burgers - burgers with rice for buns and more Asian-ish meat for patties. The drinks are good too, but skip the fries - those aren't all that special.

National Palace Museum - More historical stuff. Prepare to spend at least half a day journeying through China's thousands of years of history.

Shiling night market - There are a lot of night markets in Taipei, at least one for every district. But most people who've been to at least a few would agree that Shiling is THE best place to go for food. A bit of background - back when Shiling night market didn't exist yet, the food vendors in that area would just open shop wherever they felt like it. Usually that would be where most of the people were, where traffic was at its worst. This in turn caused traffic to get even worse. As a result, the city government built a large building where all the food vendors could go to sell their products. This eventually became known as Shiling night market. Some recommendations: da chang bao xiao chang, literally small sausage in big suasage, it's a rice ball with a chinese sausage encased inside; fried chicken, a nice juicy steak as big as a large plate; fresh fruit snow, like shaved ice but soft as snow.

Taipei 101 - Highest building in Taiwan, amazing view.

Taipei Zoo - As many animals as the most well-known of zoos in the US, admission about $2 USD. Recent additions: pandas, penguins, koalas.


That's it. On a completely different note, anyone still up for BBQ say... this Friday? And would you prefer poolside BBQ or BBQ in the park?

I went to the World Games Closing Ceremony in Kaohsiung last weekend, and it was a pretty interesting experience. Not so much the performances, which were decent but not extraordinary, but just being at an international event of that scale.

We took the Kaohsiung MRT to the stadium, and it was wayy more crowded than usual. At each stop, more and more people kept getting on. When we finally got there, there was a mass stampede for the exit. I looked back at the nearly deserted car, and saw just two people looking rather amused. The station itself was even more crowded. People were packed like sardines onto the elevators and more people were rushing up the escalators (both the one meant to go up and the one meant to go down). After we finally got out of the station, we took a shuttle over to the stadium because we had old people in our party who probably wouldn't have been able to handle walking half a mile in the heat.

In front of the stadium, people were handing out free fans - that's how hot it was. I managed to get one of the last ones (yay for being small enough to duck under elbows). By the time we got out of the fan mob, we realized that my grandpa and another old man was gone. What followed was a frantic search with five different people on cell phones trying to call the same person at the same time. We found them eventually, and the wives of the lost sheep got into a yelling match with them for a few moments before we got to security, walked through a metal detector thing, and made it into the actual stadium.

The stadium itself was HUGE. There were two floors with forty-ish rows on each floor, and it'd probably take ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. Our seats were towards the middle on the second floor where we had a good view of everything, but couldn't take close-ups of anything. Oh well.

During the Closing, the athletes walked in, exited, then the volunteers walked in a took their seats right in the middle of the field. The shows consisted of traditional dances accompanied by a live orchestra, a marching band show where they marched in a perfect square the entire time, some random stuff where people dressed up as the pink and blue blob mascots came out a waved their arms a bit, and some speeches by politicians.

The head of the World Games committee said a few words, the mayor of the city hosting the next World Games said a few words, then the mayor of Kaohsiung dropped a full-length speech on us. It was basically about how these Games have been a great success, how people are more aware of Taiwan as a country now and it's finally on the map, how the people of Kaohsiung have come such a long way as a community, blah blah blah... Of course, the mostly-Kaohsiung-resident audience totally ate it up, cheering after literally every other sentence. I thought it was interesting, but, my political views aside, I thought the speech was kind of... unsuited to be broadcast on international television. I may be wrong, but we'll see. It'll be interesting to see what happens the next few months.

After the politicians left the stage, there was a mini Wu Bai concert. It was a bit too hard rock for my tastes, but I had fun watching the volunteers' antics. At the beginning, a bunch of people ran out onto the field and started throwing glowsticks at the volunteers. Then the volunteers started throwing glowsticks at the first-floor audience members. Some people gathered a ton of glowsticks and made giant pictures and messages on the ground. Another more violent bunch had a glowstick fight. It was hilarious - one side would throw piles of glowsticks at the other side, then retreat. The other side would then scramble to gather more glowsticks and retaliate.

After the whole thing we took the train back to Taipei, leaving at 11 and arriving at 6. I couldn't sleep at all because the lights were kept on all night, but despite the exhaustion, it was definitely worth it. If something like that happens in the bay area, I'm totally signing up to be a volunteer. =]

7/12/09

Woke up at 6ish today to go running. Our new hotel was within the campus of ChengDa University (it's meant for teachers and visitors to the school to stay in. Since my grandpa teaches a class there we were able to get a premium), so I went running at the track. But by the time I found the track it was already so hot I only ran a couple of laps before going back to the hotel. Breakfast was another buffet (see why I gotta keep running everyday?).

After breakfast we went touring 臺南. Whereas Taipei and Kaohsiung are known for being the two largest most modernized cities in Taiwan, Tainan is more of a historical city. It was the old capital before the Japanese occupation of WWII and as such has a ton of old buildings from before that time.

We stopped at the old capital building and a bunch of old temples next to it. In one of the temples, we saw a board full of papers pinned to it, and another board with gold charms hanging off it across the courtyard. Apparently before a big exam, students would pin up their report card (or something, I don't really know what it is) to the board in the temple and pray to some god, and after if the results are good, they would go back to the temple, buy a charm, and hang it up as a sign of gratitude. Fascinating stuff, maybe I should try it.

For lunch we went to a restaurant on the 38th floor of the Yuan Dong hotel. It was more generic Chinese food, but arranged really aesthetically pleasing. Pics later.

After lunch we holed up in the hotel room for a few hours until it was as hot, then went down to the arcade under our hotel. There was this awesome game where you throw plastic balls at the TV screen and it would sense where it hit. Basically you'd pick some scenario - ghosts attacking some kid, alien invasion, fire demons ransacking trash cans - and then you'd throw the balls at the enemy (the ghosts, aliens, or fire demons respectively). Working together, my sister, my dad, and I were able to get to the top of the high score board! Yeah, we were kinda bored.

Around 5ish my dad's cousin came and took us out to dinner at a Tainan 小吃 place. I had a 棺材板 which is pretty much two pieces of bread fried with chowderish stuff in between. Soo good. After dinner we wandered around the food section of the local night market and got some glutinous rice balls and bao bing. I saw a bunch of places selling snake meat, but they looked kind of suspicious...

7/13/09

Went back to Taipei on the HSR this afternoon. Before we left Tainan, in the morning we wandered around the hotel area and found a stationary store selling really cheap school supplies. I found a shakey pencil. Jessica, was it you who wanted it? After that my sister and I went to get haircuts for only 100 NTS each (about $3). Well, she got it cut, I just got my bangs trimmed. Twas starting to get hard to see...

We ate lunch at the train station. I finally had a Mosburger... It's pretty good, though not what I expected at all. Mosburger is a Japanese chain store, so their burgers pretty much taste like rice balls. Instead of buns they use sticky rice and instead of a hamburger patty they use lean beef.

7/15/09

After the scorching heat of southern Taiwan, Taipei was almost bearable. Didn't do much for most of yesterday.

For dinner my grandpa's friend took my sister and I out to some buffet. It was just us, her, and a bunch of her nieces and nephews. I thought it would be really weird because of the cultural difference and stuff, but it was actually pretty fun. The others were all either my age or older. One is attending a vocational school in the fall and is planning on being a car mechanic, one wants to study business at TaiDa and is anxiously awaiting his entrance exam results, one is working for my dad (O_o wow, I never knew), one is a professional musician who also teaches piano/cello, and one works at a bank. Interesting bunch.

Today we went to National Palace Museum. It was this huge, huge building built like one of those ancient palaces. Inside there were three floors filled with old artifacts from China, dating back from thousands of years ago, and a tea house on the fourth floor. It was pretty neat, they had a ton of paintings and sculptures. And weapons. They were hecka puny! Like the swords they used back in the Three Kingdoms era were about the length of a tennis racket. Waay different from the way they make it look in Dynasty Warriors. There were also a lot of Buddha statues from all different parts of China. We saw fat Buddhas, anorexic Buddhas, happy Buddhas, meditative Buddhas, and scary-looking angry Buddhas from Tibet. Yeah, I had way too much fun in the Buddha room.

There was way too much to see in one day. According to my mom, Taiwan got all these artifacts during WWII. China shipped them over here because they were afraid the Japanese army would damage or destroy them. (Strange, what happened to the Cultural Revolution?) Apparently now China's really mad because Taiwan wants independence but it also wants to keep the artifacts. ._. I now have a mental image of two siblings fighting over toys.

7/18/09

Bunch of stuff happened the past few days... so Thursday we were supposed to go to the zoo, but in the morning we got a call from my grandma saying we should go take a look at my mom's old apartment cuz there's a bunch of repairs that need to be done. See apparently my grandpa (mom's side) was this incredible entrepreneur who left behind a small fortune for his four kids. When he died, each one inherited an apartment, and since we've been living in the US all these years, my mom's been just renting out her's.

So we got there, and it was pretty cool. Her apartment's on the very top of the building, so you get a nice view of all of Taipei. You can even see 101 from there even though it's located in Tianmu (outer district of Taipei). The novelty wore off after awhile though, so my sister and I kinda just lazed around the living room sofas while my mom, dad, uncle, and grandma made their slow way around the apartment, stopping at every leaky area to thoroughly rant and complain about the poor state of things. By the time they were done it was near noon, too late to head to the zoo on the other side of the city.

But that's okay, because we ended up going to the zoo yesterday. It was sooo hot. That's probably why the tickets were discounted - all the animals were hiding. Well, a lot of them were. We saw pandas though. Twice! It was kinda funny, there was a placard explaining how pandas spend 10 hours a day eating and 10-14 hours sleeping. Right at that moment, one of the pandas was munching on a huge pile of bamboo, and the other panda was taking a nap. How representative. xD

Oh and the monkeys were funny too. There was this runt of a monkey that kept trying to pick a fight with the bigger monkeys. When the others retaliated, the little monkey ran away and hid behind what we assumed was the mother. This happened a few times until finally, fed up, the mother monkey grabbed the little monkey's tail and wouldn't let him go bother the others. We were like LOL it's just like Jia jia (my sister).

Today we went to Neiwan, this really scenic area south of Taipei. We took a tour bus with almost my mom's entire extended family (we took up half the bus) and stopped at a little lavender village where everything, and I mean EVERYTHING from the tea, to the soap, to the flowers planted all over are dedicated to lavender. After that we stopped at a street market where my dad and I played one of those street-side archery games (and failed miserably). Our final stop was a tomato farm where we got free samples of a ton of tomatoes (all tasted the same to me, but apparently they were really good).

Yeah, it was nice seeing all my cousins again. But DANGIT why is everyone so skinny?! Grr I must've inherited all the fat genes... >_>

7/19/09

Today we went to SOGO for lunch. While we were there, I got a call from my old chem buddy Kate. She was bored so she walked over from her house nearby and we wandered around SOGO for a bit, commenting on how expensive everything was on every floor. I did buy some stuff though - a pack of dried ramen snacks and volume 2 of Bakuman.

After that we went over to Taipei 101 and took the "world's fastest elevator" to the very top. It went from floor 5 to 89 in 37 seconds, reaching a top speed of about 40 mph. My ears popped about 7 times on the way up and down. Anyway, it was pretty cool seeing all of Taipei from 400-something feet up in the air... will keep this short because we've got places to go. ._.;

7/12/09

Woke up at 6ish today to go running. Our new hotel was within the campus of ChengDa University (it's meant for teachers and visitors to the school to stay in. Since my grandpa teaches a class there we were able to get a premium), so I went running at the track. But by the time I found the track it was already so hot I only ran a couple of laps before going back to the hotel. Breakfast was another buffet (see why I gotta keep running everyday?).

After breakfast we went touring 臺南. Whereas Taipei and Kaohsiung are known for being the two largest most modernized cities in Taiwan, Tainan is more of a historical city. It was the old capital before the Japanese occupation of WWII and as such has a ton of old buildings from before that time.

We stopped at the old capital building and a bunch of old temples next to it. In one of the temples, we saw a board full of papers pinned to it, and another board with gold charms hanging off it across the courtyard. Apparently before a big exam, students would pin up their report card (or something, I don't really know what it is) to the board in the temple and pray to some god, and after if the results are good, they would go back to the temple, buy a charm, and hang it up as a sign of gratitude. Fascinating stuff, maybe I should try it.

For lunch we went to a restaurant on the 38th floor of the Yuan Dong hotel. It was more generic Chinese food, but arranged really aesthetically pleasing. Pics later.

After lunch we holed up in the hotel room for a few hours until it was as hot, then went down to the arcade under our hotel. There was this awesome game where you throw plastic balls at the TV screen and it would sense where it hit. Basically you'd pick some scenario - ghosts attacking some kid, alien invasion, fire demons ransacking trash cans - and then you'd throw the balls at the enemy (the ghosts, aliens, or fire demons respectively). Working together, my sister, my dad, and I were able to get to the top of the high score board! Yeah, we were kinda bored.

Around 5ish my dad's cousin came and took us out to dinner at a Tainan 小吃 place. I had a 棺材板 which is pretty much two pieces of bread fried with chowderish stuff in between. Soo good. After dinner we wandered around the food section of the local night market and got some glutinous rice balls and bao bing. I saw a bunch of places selling snake meat, but they looked kind of suspicious...

7/13/09

Went back to Taipei on the HSR this afternoon. Before we left Tainan, in the morning we wandered around the hotel area and found a stationary store selling really cheap school supplies. I found a shakey pencil. Jessica, was it you who wanted it? After that my sister and I went to get haircuts for only 100 NTS each (about $3). Well, she got it cut, I just got my bangs trimmed. Twas starting to get hard to see...

We ate lunch at the train station. I finally had a Mosburger... It's pretty good, though not what I expected at all. Mosburger is a Japanese chain store, so their burgers pretty much taste like rice balls. Instead of buns they use sticky rice and instead of a hamburger patty they use lean beef.

7/15/09

After the scorching heat of southern Taiwan, Taipei was almost bearable. Didn't do much for most of yesterday.

For dinner my grandpa's friend took my sister and I out to some buffet. It was just us, her, and a bunch of her nieces and nephews. I thought it would be really weird because of the cultural difference and stuff, but it was actually pretty fun. The others were all either my age or older. One is attending a vocational school in the fall and is planning on being a car mechanic, one wants to study business at TaiDa and is anxiously awaiting his entrance exam results, one is working for my dad (O_o wow, I never knew), one is a professional musician who also teaches piano/cello, and one works at a bank. Interesting bunch.

Today we went to National Palace Museum. It was this huge, huge building built like one of those ancient palaces. Inside there were three floors filled with old artifacts from China, dating back from thousands of years ago, and a tea house on the fourth floor. It was pretty neat, they had a ton of paintings and sculptures. And weapons. They were hecka puny! Like the swords they used back in the Three Kingdoms era were about the length of a tennis racket. Waay different from the way they make it look in Dynasty Warriors. There were also a lot of Buddha statues from all different parts of China. We saw fat Buddhas, anorexic Buddhas, happy Buddhas, meditative Buddhas, and scary-looking angry Buddhas from Tibet. Yeah, I had way too much fun in the Buddha room.

There was way too much to see in one day. According to my mom, Taiwan got all these artifacts during WWII. China shipped them over here because they were afraid the Japanese army would damage or destroy them. (Strange, what happened to the Cultural Revolution?) Apparently now China's really mad because Taiwan wants independence but it also wants to keep the artifacts. ._. I now have a mental image of two siblings fighting over toys.

7/7/09

Yesterday - wait, was it yesterday? All this time zone changing has left me utterly confused. Well, on Sunday we packed up and left for the airport at around 3ish. Once we got there, we promptly received our boarding passes along with tickets to the EVA Airline VIP room. Apparently my dad pulled a few strings. So we went there for the next few hours. It was basically this really nice lounge with free food and nice cushy sofas. There were also two computers with internet access available for use which we pretty much monopolized.

We boarded the plane at 6. My cousin Philip was riding Deluxe while my mom, my sister, and I rode Economy. But it wasn't that bad cuz we ended up having six seats for us three - me and my sister occupied a row of three and my mom had her own row. Apparently my dad pulled a LOT of strings...

The plane itself was hecka tricked out. Each passenger had a TV screen installed in the seat in front of them, and it was basically a mini-computer with on-demand movies, on-demand TV shows, on-demand music, on-demand video games... let me just say, whoever designed the Boeing 777 was a genius. I spent most of the 12 hours playing sudoku, listening to random Asian music, and playing Pong. Dude, that game is intense. Seriously, I got into this super fast rally with the computer, and when the pixel flew past my gate, I kinda forgot where I was and yelled "NOOO" really loudly, waking up several people around me and earning me a glare from the guy across the aisle. Oops.

Nothing much else to say about the flight. There was quite a lot of turbulence. I was sitting right by the wings, so I got to watch as the storm outside vibrated the plane wing like it was made out of rubber. Unnerving to say the least.

We touched down at Taoyuan International Airport at 10 PM Taiwan time (or 7 AM PST). There was an LED screen at the airport that informed us that the current temperature was 80 degrees F. Yep, 80 degrees at 10 PM. Ohh snap.

Got to Philip's house, went to sleep, woke up this morning at around 7 and it was even hotter. So back on the airplane it was too cold and dry, and now it's too hot and humid. I now feel fortunate I live in temperate-one-season-a-year California.

We didn't do much today. Ate a bunch of good food though - that's probably the best thing about Taiwan. We had Mister Donut and Asian bread for breakfast, Hokkaido ramen for lunch, and 包子 and 蔥油餅 bought off the streets for dinner. Mmm I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to run here or else I'll come back in August 20 pounds heavier. >_>

My dad took us to 城品 in the afternoon. It's basically this huge department store with a bookstore, CD store, your obligatory clothes stores, and a bunch of food places down in the basement. I got a pair of headphones (as opposed to earphones) from the CD store so that's one check off my to-buy list.

7/8/09

This morning I woke up at 5 AM - not because I had jetlag - because I wanted to get in a morning run before it got too hot. It was still hot, even before the sun was up. But it wasn't as bad as during the day, only about 75ish.

So I walked a block down the street to the local elementary school and started running around the track. The first thing I noticed was that it was really short. Definitely shorter than 1/4 mile. Turns out it was 200 m (I asked my mom later) so my 24 laps added up to about 3 miles. Now usually I can't stand running around the track because it's boring and there's nothing to see. But while I was running, there were people on the infield playing tennis and doing tai chi, so at least I had some entertainment.

I got back to the apartment drenched in sweat and promptly took a shower. After that I had a nice nutritious breakfast of mochi and more Asian bread and Mister Donut. I spent the next few hours studying Calc and Chem and working on subs.

Out of pure morbid curiousity, I pulled my aunt's copy of Twilight off the shelf and started reading. After the first chapter, I put it down in disgust. The writing was so bad a middle schooler could have written it. Whatever happened to show, not tell? And the whole thing read like a blog. If I want to read a blog, I'll read a blog - BOOKS should consist of something with a bit more substance. And Bella really annoyed me. She just reminded me of one of those pitiful woe-is-me people who somehow gets everyone to like her even though she didn't do anything to merit it.

But not to go on an all out Twilight rant... for lunch we walked over to my grandparent's house (I can do it without getting lost now!) and had leftover 蔥油餅 and 包子 and more mangoes. After lunch we trekked over to 7-11 to buy drinks and an MRT card. Basically if you live in the central part of Taipei, you're going to be using the subway and buses a lot, so we got cards for our whole family which we can just swipe at virtually every public transportation stop. It's pretty convenient - Taiwan's light-years ahead of the US in terms of transportation.

I spent the rest of the afternoon mostly just lazing around... and packing. We're going to 墾丁 and 高雄 the next few days (cities in the southern region of Taiwan). We went out to dinner at some fancy steak restaurant with the whole family (grandparents, Philip's family, and my grandpa's friend), then went to my dad's apartment to stay there for the night.

7/9/09

Today I woke up at 5 again to go running. My dad took me to the university across the street and I ran six laps around the track before we had to go back to get ready for the trip. We grabbed some breakfast at 7-11 (the yogurt is soo expensive there) then headed over to the MRT station.

After a few stops we got off, met up with the rest of the family and transferred over to the Taiwan High Speed Rail. It went hecka fast - we went from 臺北 to 高雄 (think SF to LA) in 1.5 hours. The transportation facilities in Taiwan never fails to amaze me. Now if only we had something like that in California...

There we got picked up by some of my grandpas old Chunghwa Telecom co-workers who drove us to a ton of places. We went to a visitor center where we watched a documentary on Dapeng Bay. Apparently they're building a ton of beach resorts and water parks there and in a few years it will be "the Hawaii of Asia." Wonder how that'll turn out. We also got complimentary icees made from fresh local fruit.

For lunch we went to a seafood restaurant and ate more local food. Then we drove a bit more and finally got to the hotel in 墾丁. The hotel was huuge and had a ridiculous amount of stuff to do. Philip, my sister, and I spent about an hour exploring the whole place (and getting lost quite a few times). There's an arcade, a gym, a recreation center with a pool table and stuff, a mini shopping mall, a bowling alley, bumper cars, an Olympic sized pool, and WaterSpace. Dude, WaterSpace. It's like an entire indoor water park with water slides, playgrounds, and a spa. We didn't have time to go today but we're definitely going tomorrow.

Around 5 the our "tour guides" came again and took us to some place near the west beach to watch the sunset. We didn't stay long enough to actually see the sunset, but we did see a ton of lizards. Then for dinner we drove over to another seafood place to have more local fish.

After dinner we went to the night market near the hotel. Cheap stuff, yay! I bought two pairs of shorts and a bunch of random stuff. We also stopped for some freshly made yogurt which they made on the spot using plain yogurt and fruit. We went back to the hotel around 10 because it started raining and we were tired. Apparently those things go on til 2 or 3 though... crazy people.

7/11/09

Wahh it's been way too hectic the past two days. Yesterday morning I went to the gym, weight trained for the first time in forever (and nearly pulled a muscle in the process), then had a ton of food at the breakfast buffet. After breakfast we went to the beach and mucked around in the sand.

In the afternoon we went to the aquarium. It was pretty bigger, probably even a little bigger than Monterey. They had a Oceans of Taiwan section, a Coral Reef section, and an Oceans of the World section. And we saw penguins! Yay! There was also this really weird eel thing. From far away it just looks like a stick or something sticking out of the ground. But when you look closer, it's actually an eel with half its body concealed for protection.

After the aquarium we went back to the hotel and had generic Chinese food for dinner, then looked around the shops in the hotel (cheap Asian stuff!) and went bowling.

Today after gym+breakfast my sister and I went to WaterSpace. It was soo fun. The mini-spa was nice and the water slides were awesome. But after going on one of the enclosed water slides I got water into my ear and it wouldn't come out...

We drove to 高雄 after lunch and my ear was still plugged, so we spent quite awhile looking for an ear doctor who worked on Saturdays. Finally we found one after checking four different places. The doctor took a look at my ear, then got out this suction thingy and started sucking stuff out of my ear. Apparently the reason why it was plugged and hurting was because the water that got in expanded the ear wax to the size of a small bean. It was kinda nasty... all red and brown and sticky...

With the done, we drove over to "Dream Mall," a ginormous mall probably twice the size of Great Mall. I bought a t-shirt at this store selling 高雄 World Games memorabilia. I wanted to buy some games too, but Wii games here aren't compatible with US Wiis. :<

For dinner one of my grandpa's old colleagues treated us to more seafood and Peking Duck. After dinner Philip and his parents got back on the HSR to go back to Taipei (they're going to Shanghai tomorrow) and the rest of us took the train to 臺南.


Candy to anyone who's read this ridiculously long post all the way to the end. ._.;