I don't think this is even really worth documenting, but whatever. Let me remember.

I was standing at the corner of Anderson and Russell, at the curb waiting for the light to change so I could walk to the bus stop across the street. I see a white pickup truck stopped a few feet away waiting for the light. From what I can remember, there were two guys, most likely caucasian. One smirked at me and I think the driver nodded at something he said. I was puzzled at what he found so amusing so I looked down to see if there were any unsavory stains or bulges on my person. As my head was ducked down, I suddenly saw this white thing fly at me and hit me in the arm. The truck rounded the corner where I was standing and drove off.

I was understandably a little shocked. I didn't react, didn't even turn my head, just kept sipping from my cup of hot milk tea until I felt like they were far enough away that any reaction I had wouldn't satisfy any sick expectations they might or might not have had. I regretted this as I turned around to look at where they'd gone, truck already hidden by the parked cars on the street, since this meant that I hadn't gotten a look at their license plate at all. I don't know what I would've done with the knowledge, even if I had been able to memorize their license in the second or so they were still in sight, but I feel frustrated at not being able to do anything.

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as my head was ducked down when the garbage was thrown and I don't know for sure if it was intended to hit me or if the guy was just aiming for the bush next to me. However, the smirk I saw before I looked away tells me otherwise. And the lane they'd initially been waiting in was only for going straight or to the left. They'd purposely exited their lane to turn right past my corner.

Afterward, I entertained fantasies of what I'd do if they came back, like march to them and slam the heel of my shoe into their car door (this was where I started wishing I wore stilettos with impracticably sharp steel heels), cuss them out, throw my milk tea into their face, or upturn my Two Sauce Chicken over rice takeout from Old Teahouse all over their laps. Sigh.

Two realizations:
1. I need to practice swearing. If I can't even say "fucker" without flinching, how am I ever going to hold my own in a screaming match? Or rather, I need to practice confrontations. Yeah, confronting someone without having to fall back on common swears as my main source of verbal weaponry is way more effective.
2. It takes way too much effort to find good angry music. I need to keep a playlist somewhere handy in the future.

I kinda wanna change my username, but it costs $15 to do so. >:[

I am dismayed to realize (though I have known for a while now) that my youtube account username makes me sound like an empty-headed Twightlight/Jacob fan, though I created it long before I ever heard of sparkling vampires. D:

In semi-related news, peer pressure is forcing me to accompany my friends to see New Moon, the second Twilight movie. I have made it well known that I do not wish to spend any more money on anything Twilight related and can't we just watch it on the computer when it leaks online plzkthxbai. They were originally planning on going to the midnight premiere and watching both the first and the second movie one after the other (oh the horror), but I found out today (last night) that tickets to New Moon had already sold out. They're now planning to watching it the day after, on Friday. I was unsurprisingly relieved, since that meant we won't be watching the first movie again. I'm willing to give New Moon the benefit of the doubt and sit through it if only for some new eye-candy (which the girls have giggled themselves silly over), but I do not want to pay near an extra ten bucks to suffer through a movie I feel I have sufficiently groaned and laughed and complained over.

The thing I like about the upstairs floor in my apartment is that the floorboards do not creak and the carpet is thick enough to muffle the sound of any (careful) footsteps. Basically makes sneaking around and eavesdropping a lot easier. Not that I do that, but just in case, ya know? The only problem is that it makes it easy for anyone else to do the same to me.

Why do all the best lines come hours after the fact? Brain, you have got to start learning to work under pressure.

Spent the last two days at a Model UN conference hosted by UC Davis. Schools from Berkeley, San Diego, and Chico came. Not exactly sure how I feel about it. Compared to policy debate, MUN delegates have SO much prep time it blows my mind and makes me slightly giddy. These world leaders have a lot of time on their hands. But then the downside of all this time is how everything drags out, though my committee apparently went way too fast through our topics and had to request two extra. Judging is really subjective and there aren't any of the technicalities used in policy debate. No topicality to go after. Instead it was like parliamentary debate in that much of the debate was more based on rhetoric than actual facts and research. We really didn't debate too fiercely about the fine details and the unspoken assumption seemed to be that, no matter how ineffective a resolution might actually be in real life towards, say, getting North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and India to sign and adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as long as the measure passes, the UN will take care of it, like it always has. -____- I probably annoyed a couple of them with my inability to just leave it at "Oh we'll put some economic incentives and sanctions into the resolution and that'll take care of everything" and walk away. I might or might not have unknowingly embarrassed myself with my hangdog tenaciousness that might or might not have shown how much of a noob I might or might not be. >_>

I think I was a back-stabber. I was the delegate for Denmark (still not sure why I chose that) and I think on one (or several) of the issues I was supposed to back the US but chose to go the other way. Oh well. These delegates don't seem to hold lasting grudges.

There were several hilarious moments during the conference, one of which involved one of the students from Berkeley. He was a foreign exchange student from Britain acting as the delegate for Libya (or the Libyan Arab Jamahiya (sp?)) and his accent was very distinct. All our chairs and legal (the moderators/judges and their assistant) were girls and they swooned and fell all over his charming accent. It was hilarious but got a little ridiculous at times. They were all, "Keep talking. I just want to hear you talk. Keep talking and I'll listen to everything you say" and so on.

Blatant favoritism.

To give him credit though, he was pretty funny and kept the conference lively with injected humor and purposely contrary views. He was informally honored at the end for being the most lively delegate who kept things interesting. His response during the closing ceremony: "Thank you for essentially making me the class clown." He was kinda cute in a really rumpled and messy 12-year old (not my words) way. The main physical advantage he had was his height, and it managed to make him look less kid and more ungainly teenager.

Oh well. Witty and eloquent with a British accent. Cue swoon.

Housemate A has the Pig Virus on top of the regular flu. Just how contagious is this stuff?

Mood swings like WOAH. At least since I now know what's going on, I can at least keep a somewhat level head through it all.

It's coming. It's almost here. I'm a little less apprehensive about this than I was a few days ago. I'm not as defensive about my age. I've stopped going, "I'm not 19 yet," probably because it's a futile effort now.

I've had many regrets this past year and those regrets cast a shadow on almost all the really good things that happened. I guess people will always have to learn to live with their mistakes. I was self-destructive, not in any extreme cliche emo way, but in a way that severely impacted my academics, and subsequently my self-respect. I was stuck in my own quicksand, just laying there and watching to see how fast the sludge could swallow me. I sometimes see things with a detached view, as if it's not happening to me. I'm not sure if this is a good thing as all this may just  serve to delay my eventual implosion of self-loathing. Or maybe all the anger buried inside will just slowly fizzle out.

My biggest fear is that I haven't learned from my mistakes. I'm still procrastinating, I'm still waiting until the last minute to study. I have less papers this quarter so that will definitely help, but I haven't been doing as well as I'd like in my classes. My only hope is to learn to set my priorities straight. That naive freshman who just wanted to learn as much as she could no matter how much it inconvenienced her and got in the way of her actual studies and believed that that enthusiasm alone would carry her is disappearing. I'd like to think the sophomore has learned better and has a better grip on reality. Let this be enough for me to learn. How much more must I destroy before I wake up?





How morbid. This was supposed to be a semi-light post. Pretend this goes after the first "paragraph".

I've always liked being one of the youngest in my class. I like saying, "Oh, I'm 18," and hearing others go, "Wow, you're so young!" or "You're a baby!" or "I wish I was 18 again." Funny how 18 seems young now. It gives me a little satisfaction to know I'm on the same level as all these other people almost a year older than me. That's kind of changed in college. This year I'm no longer guaranteed to be among the youngest, but I recognize that this may give me a slight advantage in experience and knowledge.

Now, to the Study-mobile!

1. A ticket to see Wicked in SF, because they're effing expensive. Or more expensive than I'm willing to treat myself on a whim. Oh, and since I'm dreaming anyway, might as well be specific as hell and have the ticket be to good seats with an unobstructed view of the entire stage, on a weekend when I already plan to go home, like during the winter holidays. Oh, and the experience is always better if there's someone to giggle and squee over the songs and characters and costumes with, so make that multiple tickets. Sigh.

2. A's for all my classes, present, past, and future. Why is school-related stuff always in the top 3? Rhetorical question, I know.

3. A Driver's license. Notice I didn't even say "car". I just want the recognized ability to drive without injuring myself or killing others.

My other housemate J, who lives in the room next to mine, has this annoying tendency to stay holed up in her room on her computer for hours at a time and not respond when we knock on her door. Today was especially bad because I needed to tell her that the girl who responded to my craigslist ad for a fourth housemate is coming to look at the apartment tomorrow around noon. I knocked on her door and called her name several times and she didn't respond. We (my other roommate A and I) weren't sure whether she was gone or just sleeping. Eventually , when it got dark enough, we could make out that the light was on in her room from the crack under her door. Of course, when I knocked on her door again, she still didn't respond.

I eventually cooked up an ingenious plan to smoke the bear out of her cave: unplug our wireless internet router. Sure enough, a few minutes later, I hear the creak of a door and she appears, clad in pajama pants and t-shirt. Apparently she heard us knocking on her door but she was too "busy doing work" to bother even sparing one single minute to acknowledge our insistent and repeated knocks.

AHAHAHA <3

This conversation from this LJ meme is so cute! dual_avi wanted to get some ideas for a story and so created a meme where one person would type something and then she would respond with something the sentence or object or whatever reminded her of and then they'd continue until she got inspiration.

Here's the link to the thread for that specific conversation: Math is romantic

Excerpt:

	checkeredpaint 2009-10-17 06:22 pm (local) (link)
	things fall apart when there's too much pressure and speed and the rate of gravity will always be 9.8 m/s/s as long as you're still here (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dual_avi 2009-10-17 06:23 pm (local) (link)
	physics says that all objects exert a gravitational pull (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	checkeredpaint 2009-10-17 06:28 pm (local) (link)
	skidding desks across a classroom because it's okay this time (and even if it really isn't) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dual_avi 2009-10-17 06:29 pm (local) (link)
	because all desks point to you ♥ (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	checkeredpaint 2009-10-17 06:32 pm (local) (link)
	all diameters intersect that center that you are (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dual_avi 2009-10-17 06:36 pm (local) (link)
	math shouldn't be so romantic :( (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	checkeredpaint 2009-10-17 06:37 pm (local) (link)
	it isn't, sometimes - asymptotes are the mathematics of loneliness :( (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dual_avi 2009-10-17 06:41 pm (local) (link)
	stupid sexy lonely mathematics...

There's a little more after. There's a line I like that comes after this already cute part. Read. It'll take, like 1.5 minutes max.

^________^

I made a "Whose Turn Is It To Get Toilet Paper?" Tally Sheet. Every time someone gets toilet paper and paper towels, she can mark a tally next to her name so we can remember how many times we've each contributed. I kinda think it's more of a hassle than it's worth and it makes me feel like I'm in kindergarten, but it tickled me to make it.

My housemates and I are such a passive-aggressive bunch. It's not really something to be proud of, but at least no one's flown off the handle yet. We don't have any major problems but we should get together sometime soon to set down some house rules before someone explodes. Now to tap some of that deeply buried aggression.

One of my housemates lives across the "hall" from me. Our rooms and desks are positioned JUST so that we can see each other if we crane our necks a little. We can both be at our desks, doing our thing, and if we suddenly need to ask each other something, we just lean a bit and yell to each across the length of the hallway and both rooms. ^_^

I found God
On the corner of First and Amistad
Where the west
Was all but won
All alone
Smoking his last cigarette
I said, “Where you been?”
He said, “Ask anything.”

I'm not a Christian, but I really like the opening lyrics to The Fray's You Found Me. This sounds kinda weird, but I think what finally drew me to the song was the simple rhyming of "God" and "Amistad". Dunno why. I just like it. :D But I'm not all that enthusiastic about the rest of the song. I've heard this song before, but it didn't really stick with me, probably because the singing style for the rest of the song sounds mainly like he's whining out the words.

Hm, I guess I didn't really need to make that disclaimer about technically not being a Christian, since the rest of the song is about questioning God and his presence during tough times. Now if only he didn't sound as drunk during the chorus.

Heh, forgot to log it until after 12 AM again. Got my third stripe today (/yesterday >_>)! Today was testing but I had to go volunteer at the Autumn Moon festival held at Irving so, oh well. Stuffed many pamphlets with stuff. Passed said pamphlets out to any hapless individual in want of more paper to stuff in a recycle bin. Got a free meal at Wonton King afterwards, except the Senator and his wife didn't show up for the dinner. Ah well. Acquired the nickname of "Super Woman" after single-handedly carrying a heavy wooden table during clean up.

I got my second white stripe in Kung-fu today! (Well, technically, yesterday.) This was I think my 8th or 9th lesson so far, counting the 2 trial classes. I forget when I got my first white stripe (probably somewhere around the 5th lesson). I tried to have See Hing Corrigan test me for blocks as well so he could give me a third stripe, but he wouldn't. :\ Oh well. At this rate, if I don't get my third stripe by this Saturday, I won't be able to test for my white fringe at the end of the month, especially since I'm going to be moving out shortly.

Bought my bed and frame today (yesterday) at Sears. They'll deliver it on Aug 23 to my apartment, so if i move in before then I'll have to sleep on an air mattress or the couch.

Late because I suck at doing things when I say I will. To be updated as I remember them. Pardon the grammar/shifting tenses, I want to get this down befor I forget.

1. Seeing my grandma get frisked by airport security. She ran into trouble both when we were going to New York and coming back from Boston. The first time was because of her back support waist belt thingy; the second time was because she'd forgotten to take out various bottles of liquids from her backpack. The first time was hilarious, seeing my uncomprehending grandma who only speaks minimal English get shepherded into the "risk" section of the area. I was laughing too hard to remember to take out my camera and in the end I only got a blurry picture of the moment with my camera phone.

2. NIAGARA FALLS. We took a ferry that took us close to the waterfalls and it was AWESOME. Couldn't keep my eyes open enough because of all the spray though. But it was still a really cool experience. We wore these blue plastic raincoats that were too hot on land but protected the larger portions of our bodies enough so that we weren't completely soaked to the skin. I'm still glad I wore sandals and shorts though. I only noticed when looking at the pictures afterward, but my grandma looked so cute all bundled up with the hood tied and everything.  I had to keep my camera out in order to take pictures/ film the experience and it's a good thing it didn't get waterlogged. On the boat there was a taller woman in front of me and her raincoat kept flying up and blocking my view so I eventually settled on surreptitiously tugging it down to see better. My mom did the same thing where she was standing except she told me she accidentally ripped a hole in the other person's raincoat. XD

3. Meeting a Chinese family from Holland. The kids were around my and my brother's age and could speak English pretty well, which was nice. They learn so many languages over there, and I can barely manage English and Chinese. V_V

4. Playing Mafia and Signs with the other kids on the bus tour in the hotel lobby on the last night of the trip.

5. My tour guide Carlton recommending the bathrooms as the best attraction for our next tourist stop (because he didn't want us using the one on the bus).

6. Listening to my tour guide regale us with tales of past trips in 3 different languages. Well, technically 2, since Cantonese and Mandarin are both Chinese.

7. Carlton's story of miscommunication in Canada. Some background on languages first. In French, "Bonjour" means "hello" and "Merci" means "thanks". In Cantonese, "Bun Joo" (I'm only writing it out phonetically) means "idiot" and "Meh see" means "what?" or, if your tone is peeved enough, "what is your problem?" My tour guide told us how one morning when we was on another bus tour in Canada, some people (probably from the same tour) passed by and greeted him, "Bonjour." Not knowing French, he thought they were calling him an "idiot" and was left feeling very confused. Later on, he was going through a door and held it open for some people coming out behind him, who then thanked him, "Merci." Again, he was left nonplussed, wondering, "I'm holding out the door for them. What do they mean 'what'?"

8. Calton taught us a new song and dance meant for long bus/plane rides so that our limbs/muscles/butt don't get too sore. Paired it with hilarious facial expressions. The catchy song was stuck in my head for the rest of the trip. Too bad I can't remember it anymore. :\

9. East coast architecture. *_* Pwettyyyyyy. Although when I came back with the eyes of a tourist, I noticed San Francisco's not half bad herself. ^_^

For those who don't know, I was on a week-long bus tour of part of the east coast and Canada, traveling through US states New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and to Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, etc. Will update about the trip later.

Maybe. :)