I feel like the go-between for everything.

Fangirls are crazy people; I would know. :< Unlike fanboys, who herd together for the entire duration, fangirls are only nice to each other before the rush, then it's claws, fangs, whatever so that they get ahead of a rush.

I feel like I've been ditched many a times by so-called fangirl "friends," even though, frankly, I think some of them owe me. >.>; Take for example one girl. She was supposed to go with me to KMF a couple of years ago. I bought her a ticket and everything, and last minute, her mom prevents her from going, and I'm down $60. D: Why don't you have the foresight to ASK FIRST?! That was my problem with being too trusting... And in previous years, when I asked to go on her fangirl excursions, she totally ignored me, so then I learned not to depend on her. Admittedly, I was super jealous of how much she was able to interact with celebs, but ehh, if she wanted to be pushy about it and write all this nonsense about giving celebs space when she herself was quite near that limit... whatever... >.>;

Then she asks me for those concert tickets because she couldn't get any herself. And I'm like wtf. You never helped me, and now you want me to do you such a big favor? >.>;

Then I have another friend. I usually love going to concerts with her, and we were supposed to go to the Google concert together, but one day, after she stopped talking to me about it, I went to look for her in her room, only for her to tell me she was going up with some other people the day before I could... and I felt super sad. :( 'cause now I needed to look for my own transportation. ;_; Anyways, because things were uncertain, I asked another friend to try to get extra tickets with me, and he got them... so to foolproof my plan, I got a spare ticket in case things didn't happen, and plus, he offered me a ride. This was mostly because I told him about the concert the day that tickets went on sale... Except the friend I was originally supposed to go with found out one of her sources bailed on her... >_>;;

And I feel like I've spent the weekend doing more scrambling asking around for tickets for other people, which I find to be super lame...

:(

And man, Techers... they have like a bad sense of priority or something. -_- So I literally spent nearly all of Weds-Sat morning either feeling really horrible or working on stack things... (like literally, I think the reason I felt SO sick on Friday was because I pulled an all-nighter Thursday night to get things to work...) And then people managed to burn out all 18 lasers... And I'm like wtfff... you guys didn't have time during the rest of the week to help me out... >.>; And it's not like I wanted to make another drive to the dollar store to buy 18 lasers... especially since I've been neglecting this huge project for it, and I'll be basically MIA next weekend due to SMTown and Google's concert... So Helena's parents came over, and she went to 10 different stores to look for lasers to no avail, but man... in the time it went to 10 stores within the area that maybe had the lasers, she could've totally gone to Glendale and back, where there were guaranteed to be lasers.... -____-...... I thought that would be the obvious choice?

And in the end, we have no devices to go pew pew... And I'm losing all motivation... >.>;;

I mean, Avery stacks are fun, but they're generally not that cool. -_-... But it's because people in Avery are so freaking afraid of liability or injury, they stick to such tame things... Sighhh... I spent all that time thinking up new ideas with Glen, and people only liked the more mundane form of 1 idea... >.>;

Also, I've been ignoring someone. His attitude annoys me, and I'm surprised he even bothered to talk to me.

Oh, and in addition to totally giving up on a certain someone that I was mad crushing on over the summer, I've come to the conclusion that I was an idiot for even liking him in the first place. What kind of real, supposedly sincere, guy does that?! wtf man. D:

I'm moving up north, I haven't had time to pack. I have to deal with awkwardly timed societal obligations, and a billion other things. I can't relax without being sick. I can't enjoy shit in the last 3 weeks I have left.

FUCK. I HATE ALL THESE OBLIGATIONS.

I post in my LJ to complain, and less seldomly post about the good times. Great. Affirmed. -_-

You know, I think it's finally hit me that I won't be in SoCal much longer. All the stress of planning this and that has prevented me from thinking too much about it... Nevertheless, it's making me feel super nostalgic and a little sad. Today's one of those few days that I've done nothing but lounge around the couches at home, sleeping, reading, drinking milkshakes that my dad made, staring at the chickens and the duck wandering around our backyard... The dog likes to lick me and go berserk... >.>;

It's true. I don't have many days at home where I actually feel satisfied just being there, but this is one of such days.

The Japanese food, Keith, etc.~

All the cool hangout places in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills and Hollywood that I just recently discovered.... I won't be able to visit for a while. ;_;

Yep, I'm finally leaving the place I've spent over 21 years of my life... and taking a half step forward into real life.

I feel like I've turned my FB into a makeshift LJ/Twitter... I hope posting about everything that's actually happened... really happens.... Hopefully, I'll have more time when I settle in at Apple... Sigh... 5 years...

Also, should I be leaving all my toys in my room? I'd like to take them with me when I find a permanent place to stay, but Apple housing is only for 2.5 months, and who knows if I'll be moving after I stay at some place at Berkeley for a year... x_x Maybe I'll just take the things I've kept with me in my dorm room...

All that really means is that I'll need to start packing the weekend before I leave... After certain things are taken care of...

Lots of things have happened since I've last posted, but I haven't had the time to update. :( This has been one hell of a roller coaster ride~ and after I settle down somewhat, I'll try to make a huge recap entry. :D

Wait for meeeee <3

Concerts! Apple! GRAD SCHOOL!

NO VACATION :(

*_* April Fools or not, that in itself is worth a Livejournal entry, despite the fact that I'm not done grading... nor have I posted about grad school and Vegas and the likes. D: TOONAMI!!! TOM!!! *_* OMG!!!

Oh man, this brings me back to the days when I played silly little Cartoon Network Flash games... Before I started watching subbed anime :o! And when I went crazy trying to win that Sailor Moon price package... :( :(

Oh man, bad dubs... HAHAHAHA...

It made me think of Saturday morning cartoons :( And I mistook the day of the week. ;_; Bye-bye spring break. T_T

You know, maybe I should keep a public list of people I'm trying to avoid, so people don't reach stupid conclusions. WTF man. Just because I've been staying up until 4AM doing shit in lab/freaking out about more pressing matters/falling asleep for 12+ hrs straight... I haven't been responding to IMs. Ermm...

I hate clingy guys who go so far as to question why I haven't been talking to them. Man. Stop being so girly.

So yes, receiving an IM like that and basically asking me to defend myself is kinda... umm... >_>;

If I had really been trying to avoid you, I'm sure I would've commented about it on my last LJ entry.

Remember when I said that I usually didn't post on LJ when things were going well for me? I guess it's still sort of true. Things are okay, relative to what they have been for the last 2 years or so, but, well, they haven't been that great either.

I had a few good days:

3 weeks ago, I hung out with Jennifer and Helena for the first time in a while. It was nice and refreshing, mostly to know that they still cared about me enough to want to hang out. :)

Then that Friday, I went to Santa Monica with Manuel and his brother. It was fun! We walked around 3rd St. Promenade and the pier~ And I saw the Knicks vs. Lakers game at Barney's Beanery. Super legit!

See FB update: lol so i went to santa monica with manuel and his brother, ate dinner at barney's beanery while watching the lakers vs. nicks game, and now i know what all this hype about jeremey lin has been. rofl. intense game~!!! haven't felt that *_* about basketball before... then we went to the pier, drove around ucla for the first time (omg!), and drove around beverly hills + hollywood/vine like the tourists we were meant to be. ahahaha. lovely addition to cha with murtaza, helena, and jennifer at the start of the week. :D

Then last week was Valentine's Day. Jennifer, Helena, and I wanted to go out for a singles dinner, but everywhere we went was super crowded. D: In the end, Helena got Baja Fresh, and while waiting for her takeout, a table freed up and was then taken at Islands. But they seated us after we got back~ The chocolate smoothie was super meh :\ And I was in a hurry to be back for OH that no one showed up to. Argh!

I got a note about how much my friendship was valued from James, and then I kind of started to question it. I mean, the last time we talked, he was engrossed in his conversation with Brian about wines and this and that, and the previous time, he just left me hanging in the middle of our conversation when Christine came along. D:

So I wrote on his wall, calling him a noob, and he wanted to know why, so I wrote a big, slightly distressed e-mail about feeling burdensome and being friendzoned, and I guess he didn't get what was driving me crazy, so he called while I was returning from Shinsengumi with Jama and Raul (oh man, I ate so much)... except Raul picked up, and I didn't call back for a while.

Well, the times I did call back, he never picked up...

>.>; Then on Friday, my big day hanging out with the Japanese college students turned into somewhat of a less-than-stellar kind of event... I mean, I liked talking to them~ We went shopping and to Cheesecake Factory. I didn't recognize one girl from last summer, so I felt guilty about it afterwards... >.< The food was better than last time, but, in my nervousness for having to drive people around, and the fact that I had not slept for 42 hrs while working on a report and only got 5 hrs of sleep subsequently, my driving was super subpar. Yep, that and we had to make it to Griffith Observatory before they closed, and we only got to roam around for probably around 20 minutes before they shoed us away. I dropped them off, and got back to Tech, and that was the end of it. :( I did have fun talking about SMAP and some things... and holding a fandom conversation isn't that difficult these days...

So I took a break from driving on Saturday (mostly spent the latter part of the day and the beginning of this week watching Heartstrings - it was okay, the CNBlue guy is super cute! but the ending was somewhat painfully sucky to watch...), and on Sunday, I went with some Darbs to Curry House *_*... Which might have been a bad choice, because I had already agreed to go to kbbq with James and Evan... D: So I was super stuffed! Anyways, I dropped by Music Plaza, bought an SNSD poster for Henry (if I ever see him...) and a SuJu calendar at 30% off (still not that great, especially since it's almost March)... And James and Evan helped me parallel park. We went to the same restaurant that Norman took me to, and lo and behold, I see Alvin of all people, except when I said are you Alvin?! He looked at me kind of funnily, as if he thought I was weird or that he was purposely avoiding me. D: Then again, he was with 3 Korean girls, so maybe it's understandable. But it was ironic, 'cause James was all like he was being a jerk, but sometimes, in either his obliviousness or in his attempt to avoid the subject, he himself also comes off like that. ~_~;; Anyways, it was pretty good food~ I actually really liked the salad (haha)...

And then we went to Cha for boba, and I camped out on their couch while watching Heartstrings. Man, those dramas make me feel all bleh about not having a nice bf. (I want to ride a ferris wheel with someone! except Santa Monica's ferris wheel was super lackluster D:)... And James just had to ask if I was being troubled with guys, and then we proceed to talk about girls of interest. Way to not get the message.

Oh, and I was super pissed off on the Thursday before, because that guy that I mentioned before (the tea guy, if you will), just comes off as sooo pretentious. D: I paid $12 to go to the golf course... and I was stuck listening to him telling me what to do every step of the way. OMG. At some point, I wanted to just slap him, but I guess the only thing I wound up doing was make a super sarcastic comment. >.>;

Next day, we decided to go shopping at Citadel. Originally, it was just going to be me and James... but he told me to walk to Moore rather than drive there, so I went, and bumped into Joy, and the moment I told her about our plans, I could see her eyes beaming, as though she really wanted to come along, so I was like OK. And we went... first to my house, so I could shower >.>; (kbbq smell weee~)... And then to Citadel. Except we parted ways with James, and he wound up buying more things than Joy, and I ended up with nothing.... D: Then I drove to 'Tech (I drove wayyyy too much...) and picked up Matt so that we could all eat at the BJ's in Glendale at James' suggestion. I was really disappointed in the pasta :( Poo. And then I drove them back and that was the end of it.

I panicked on Tuesday, because I lost a key, and I stayed up until ~4 or so taking measurements, while also finishing Heartstrings and starting Moon that Embraces the Sun (to keep myself entertained while making measurements...). I finished up measurements on Wednesday, went home early, I think? And on Thursday, I had dinner at the Ath for SURF... I forgot about formal attire, and I went in looking the least formal out of everyone D: ... which is sad, because usually, I dress in something that's more acceptable for Ath dinners... Waii~ Then I had OH, and stayed up until 4 again to write Matlab code. :<

Yesterday was Avery's formal dinner. :< I mostly slept and didn't get work done, after spending some time looking for my 91 project that turned out to be at school... And yeah, I wanted to show off a dress to James, except he wasn't even there. :( Man, I realized on Sunday, when I hung out with him, that there was no point ever in liking him. I mean, first of all, I don't recall being friend-zoned by anyone that badly before. Second of all, he's not that good looking. Third, he doesn't understand me all that well, and I feel somewhat out of place in his conversations. Yep. No point. Just gotta find a nice looking Asian-idol like person. xD

Welp. I gave a headbutt that was reciprocated, but I didn't mean for that to happen, so mannn that hurt. :( And I sat with some EE juniors and this one guy that really just didn't get the picture. >.>; I mean, does he not understand the situation to have the courtesy to move 2 seats over when my friends ask to join? >.>; But yeah, I spent the evening talking about Caltech guys and being super gossipy. Hahahaha. And then we went to Cha~ And I proceede to spill "wire glue" everywhere, when I went to look for my key.

WTF man. :< Curiosity killed the cat. Turns out the wire glue was like black paint. I got it on my dress and shoes. Luckily, my dress was already black, and I got most of it off my shoes... But it splattered all over the floor, so I spent an hour scraping it off. D: Not cool!

And then I was talking to Alex about grad school, and now I've become somewhat annoyed. >.>;

Without regard for professors, I feel like Stanford's the ideal place to go. It undeniably has the best connections to Silicon Valley... but... I didn't get a 3 yr fellowship... >.>; It would relieve a lot of stress to have gotten it. At least at Berkeley, I've already gotten a guarantee of support, so long as I keep up my GPA, I guess, even if the support's just RA. MIT is still up in the air, but I guess it really just depends on how visiting day goes... So yeah, things feel epically uncertain.

I'm annoyed. Can someone tell me how I can be better at playing those kinds of games, be a better sweet talker, etc. etc. ? I feel like that's how you move forward in life, and get yourself in the door, regardless of how good you actually are. -_-

Life's weird. I need a good idea. I'm not satisfied with being a typical 8-5 worker...

Anyways, off to Boston at the end of this week, and then the Bay Area the following week.

Still debating whether or not I want to go to NY over spring break...

Grading takes too long. It's not cool.

I almost drove into a bicyclist today. Scary! x_x Gotta look in both directions better when turning...

I also almost drove into a pack of bunnies, but they scurried off before I got too close. SO CUTE. *_* BUNNIES <3

Well, I just found out that apparently I didn't screw up that one application I thought I might have, and I actually submitted an SoP (or one would hope I did...) instead of some miscellaneous PDF. :D Now my only goal is to be able to poke Arthur again, and be like heyyy, what's up? lmao... >.>; /not over the fact that he blocked me. T_T!!

Oh dear Apple summer/NorCal, how much I've been thinking about you lately.

I bought 2 albums from Book off today, for $24.--.

We are SMAP! ($15)

And L'arc's Kiss ($9)

But I screwed up the lyrics sheet for SMAP and ripped it, after it got stuck on the sticky part of the plastic wrapper. x_X /super sad.

It brings back sooooo many memories <33 Osaka Dome! *_*

We had Shinsengumi ramen and udon inside the Marukai food court <3

Then... D: I can't believe the Torrance Book Off moved and became a 95% English merchandise place. Not cool!

Also wtf: "Hi all, I thought I invited all of you to the mailing list, but it looks like you didn't accept the link (or probably I actually didn't add you). "

The latter is true. Wrong tone, majorly, for getting people to sign up for your stupid mailing list.

For some reason, I feel rather dissatisfied at the end of this week, but really, I don't understand why that is.

It is true that I feel more like putting off writing these entries whenever good things happen in life. I don't understand. One would think that I would want to look back on the better times in my life...

After a particularly dull weekend~

Monday: I didn't get any lab work done, because when I had arrived at school, Manuel had already left to take his driving test... and he got back after my TA meeting with Glen, but decided to go to the gym before we met up with some other grad/law students for a night out at the Yard House. I wanted to grab a bite to eat beforehand, so I asked Raul to come with me to Big Boy's, only to find out it had closed. WTF. D: It opened not too long ago, business didn't seem that bad, and man, there goes nostalgia kicking in. :< Ohh the lovely kids meal chicken tenders that I loved so much~ How dare you run away?! T_T Instead, I got my mango-a-go-go from Jamba Juice, and went back to Moore.

Yep, then I went to Yard House, had a lovely two-hour conversation with people, a nice burger, and a glorious, but ridiculously priced sour apple martini. It's the first time I felt like vodka tasted good with anything. O_o... Anyways, the conversations were quite interesting~ Oh startups~

On Tuesday morning, I woke up recollecting my memories of that one new full-time employee at NTT. We met at the group BBQ (when I also got to taste a little chu-hai xD), and we'd occasionally pass by each other at work, and I think possibly at the apartment... I thought he was the best looking guy I had been around D:... Possibly kinda quirky, but his mannerisms were cute. xD; Oh dear goodness. x3

I spent the entire day fuming over Paypal. Paypal is such a shady business, tricking people into using their shitty BillMeLater service... I thought I had paid by clicking that stupid Pay right now button, but no, it wasn't processed... And then I get spammed from BillMeLater every day... And one of the many e-mails happens to be a "your statement is ready" e-mail, only to have me go to check and discover that I didn't even have an account with them. :O How can you have a statement without even having an authorized account?! And I decided just to make sure, so I created a count on the 31st, only to realize my payment was due on the 2nd, and my mom was super omgwtfbbq about not wanting me to give out any kinds of checking/savings account #'s to Paypal... So I freaked out, and that was on my mind all day, despite enjoying the fake golf course set up in the morning (I've come to like golf quite a bit... It relieves stress, even if I do suck...). Eventually, I got things cleared away by going to Walgreens to buy a stupid MoneyPak to load $30 onto Paypal to use to pay BillMeLater. wtf. >.>; and at a $4.95 convenience charge or whatever. The only good thing that came out of running to Walgreens was that I got to order rainbow rolls from SanSai because I was starving. Oh, but I got a sexy poster of JYJ from Helena and Jennifer, they redrew a pic on the whiteboard down in 010 to be a chipmunk with glasses and a MBP on a couch --> me... and err...

The rest of the night wasn't all too interesting. I took some measurements, and then went off to OH.Oh, I had a loonnngggg conversation with Samson about life and relationships and the likes until nearly 1AM. Those kinds of conversations are kind of refreshing when you don't have to worry about stuff due the next day.

Wednesday, I worked on that paper synopsis, and, as a result, was kind of late to class. Manuel had to leave, so I took the opportunity to change Glen's testbench to actually give me useful grading information... That took ages, because outputting to the console is a bigger pain in the ass than I would've liked for pre VHDL 2008 standards. Thank goodness for function libraries. @_@ Why must it only take strings?! And why aren't there easier ways to convert to strings?! Makes no sense to me. :<

On Thursday, we practice putting in golf. I feel like I managed to get stuck with the two most snobbish people in the class. -_- It's not necessarily a bad thing, but eh, it's the closest word I can come to describing them. There wasn't really anything interesting to talk to them about, save for like one guy inquiring about the other guy reading Kafka, the other guy making a remark about it, and then saying that it was for class... And then talking about wine and the whatnot. >.>; Can you tell that I've been annoyed by a certain someone for some time now? The more I think about it, the more... wtf was I thinking?! do I feel. >.>;

Of all people...

So I spent the afternoon getting more familiar with Matlab file commands and the whatnot, and realizing that I suck at differentiating between cells, structures, arrays, etc. @_@ I didn't want to eat lunch, but my stomach was telling me otherwise, so I accidentally bought a funky Chandler pizza that I didn't like, since I just took whatever was on the pizza warmer. >.>; And then I drove all the way down to Ktown by myself (thanks to the voice navigation on my phone). Woot! I discovered the kbbq place Norman told me to go to was right by the plaza that had Choi's Records. I went to that place during my junior year of HS. Wow. It's been so long!

I was interested to see what kind of people he knew, because we've been friends since we were toddlers... And it was surprising. xD; They were really... normal people. Nice people, but quite normal. o_O Like you know, architecture majors, philosophy majors... What's CS type people. :o Not the somewhat more Asian crowd I was expecting in the least! So anyways, I felt like the people that sat at the table were divided in two. o_O And I ended up not really talking much, until someone brought up Jaejoong, and then my eyes lit up, and we spent the remaining time talking about KMF and the likes (yes, this was with the more Asian half of the table lolol...). It must be really bad that I'm stereotyping like crazy in these situations. @_@ They were pretty open, and I can see why my friend is friends with these open and nice people lol...

Then we went to some place called boba bear, which apparently sells boba, crepes, and hookah. o_O That was the first time I had ever seen anyone smoking that in real life, and I'm sure I've inhaled enough second-hand smoke to last a lifetime. x_x I don't think I'll be trying that anytime soon... But the place didn't quite stink of your usual cigarette-y smoke... so I just stayed, drank really artificial almond milk tea, played Apples to Apples, and Uno, until nearly 1 AM. As normal as it seems, I enjoyed the interaction quite a bit. I feel like I was filling in the gaps to a normal high school life that I never had. Hahaha. And I liked that despite being very different people, they weren't difficult to hang out with. One guy even covered my drink, and paid for valet.

Which brings me to another point. I never understood why Korean people were just that intent on making money from valet service in the tiny lots in front of their stores. o_O Every time I've gone to kbbq in Ktown, it's always been about paying $1-2 for valet service. Then again, it's not too pricey or anything, so meh? That and I loled when the female owner-waitress person came to our table and was all like... pay first! hahaha... Gotta go with Korean people to get the best service. >.<

Friday, I got my second acceptance. *_* I'm still wondering if I really did send in a non-SoP on accident to that one school. >.< Which would be terrible, because I think it would still be my ideal... Depending on what I want to do with my life. Crap. >.< But at least I've come one step closer to being able to chill in NorCal for the rest of my life. Err... not chill... More like be worked to death... but I don't seem to mind all that much. I had OH, Glen showed up, and we played a bunch of YouTube videos. I felt happy that the VHDL modifications I made were useful to me, Noddy, and everyone who needed to resubmit stuff, and I had a nice dinner at Teaspots with Raul. I had been craving beef stew noodle all week *_*. Tho now I think I caught someone's cold, and I'm not sure if it was from Raul or Manuel. >.>; The good thing about not living in the dorms is that I haven't gotten really really sick since last school year, which is quite the miracle, since I'm very prone to getting sick and developing a 5+ week long cough. x_x

I was feeling really pissy about some people in 119 and their desperation for a couple of points. I told them that they wouldn't get the chance to resubmit, because they turned in stuff too late, but they had the nerve to go and ask, even though I told them it wouldn't work... saying how they were working so hard to fix the problems, and they'd appreciate the extension. OMG. I just felt like they totally went behind my back for a couple of stupid points. /pissed

Today, I woke up super late, and I haven't really accomplished much, despite having to finish up my report by Tuesday. ._.;; Tomorrow, I'm probably going to Book Off with Tom, and I wonder if I convinced him to stop by the beach while we're at it. *_* The weather's been so great. I see people posting pics of the beach. I want to do that too! I did watch a Big Bang parody of Secret Garden. xD; I was suddenly curious after browsing Soompi and remembering that girl I met on Thursday. G Dragon is awesome~ Although I can't say I really enjoy their type of music... But man, those kiss scenes were hilarious! <3

I'm finally living the life I've always wanted to enjoy as a college student. *_* In some ways, I think it's nice. I've been feeling a lot more upbeat now that I don't have to think too hard about friendships. I don't really care any more. If people have better friends, then whatever. I think I'm just happy with having a large circle of like semi-friends without the BFF title that I can sit down with randomly and have a nice, casual, non-stuck-up type conversation. And rather than thinking wtf why'd they go out without asking me or omg they're ditching me~ I get to just randomly pop my head in the door, and be like, hey hey let's get Daikokuya or let's get Teaspots or something. Spontaneous requests to hang out --> people can't bail on me last minute. If they can't come, then so be it. It works out better than trying to plan a week in advance only for people to tell me their feet hurt or they have HW due the next day. >.>; That and also, being more open about friendships means that I actually see less of people who are the types to make my life hellish and miserable. :D... Because I've found more open people to be around. :D No more of that Oh I didn't mean to leave you out, but then you send me that big e-mail of sorry I did that or like stupid oh you say you don't like x person, when turns out you become super chummy with them in my absence kind of shit, and somehow, I've been relegated to the third wheel in this friendship. :< I hate that.

I dunno. Aha. I don't give a shit about Ka any more (in a good kind of way--I'm ok with moving on, and at least he's tried to sort of patch things up and stuff)... Other people, not so much, and I'll probably hate them for the rest of my life. Wee~

/last bit of bitterness.

Next week, I need to make plans to hang out with Lawrence and Evan. *_* Then the week after that, I'm going to hang out with a bunch of Japanese daigakusei~ And I think the following week, my friend from NTT will be here.

Then grad school visits, the end of 2nd term, being done with all my requirements... waiting for summer and Apple... moving up north... Chilling in SF~

Oh, and the meantime, some kickass concerts. *_* And if there aren't grad school visits that weekend, I'll be sure to hit up the FTIsland/CNBlue concert, even though I don't really listen to them. xD;

I love having a car.

You know, I still think it'd be nice to have someone special for Valentines Day or White Day, and really, I feel like that's the only thing that's missing in my term-of-actually-living, but eh, one day~ I do like the chase xD, but I've just gotta find the balance between liking a guy who only tells me about his own relationship troubles, getting infatuated because people invite me to out-of-the-norm activities, or role-model big-brother figures that won't think of me as anything else than a little sister, and then you have those guys were are creepy and have lolita complexes ew... or who are too self-absorbed and in their own little worlds. Ahh~~ I can't believe it's that hard. But maybe it's because most of the decent guys are already taken. Hahaha... And don't try to start a conversation with "I didn't know you had a website" after reading my status message. >.>;; I'm not going to reply, because I think you're trying too hard.

I've got lots of people to e-mail :( and apparently, I should've asked people to get recs in sooner, because a school I was interested in, but applied later to has already started accepting people. x_x crap. And I'm still two recs short. @_@ Although it's not hard to click a button to send it in...

Manga featuring Hyakunin Isshu! Too bad so little of it is scanlated. ちはやふる

Edits: Belated happy birthday to Jaejae and Hyde <3

On the subject of not-quite-fairytale-manga-romances.

I used to always wonder why the "badass" characters wound up with the female leads. Why did the Domyoji types end up with the Tsukishi types, whereas the Rui types were just as great, if not better? The girl falls in love with the goody-goody Rui first, and then, at some point, comes to the realization that the other guy is only a badass on the outside, and is actually some sulky child with a sad past, any maybe out of a sense of omg-how-sad-must-protect, she decides that she truly wants to be with the Domyoji type... (and to a lesser extent, how Tohru ends up with Kyou instead of Yuki, granted Kyou wasn't quite as badass....)

Or not.

Take Nana, for example. Why does Hachi end up with Takumi instead of Nobuo? Sure, I guess you can't really say that she ends up with him, because the flashforwards, last I recall, seem to mention otherwise... AHHH... Why did the manga have to go on hiatus THERE?! SO CONFUSED.

Okay, so Cat Street was a great counterexample to the statement in general. Kouichi was WAYYY cooler than what's his face.

Anyways, I think I have yet to see a Korean drama in which the guy that's always the source of comfort for the girl becomes anything but a "best friend" to her... The Domyoji types always win... Kind of like Protect the Boss, except Jaejoong's character was given a lot of power, and in some way, the guy who was originally supposed to be the more badass-y type turned out to be much less so... So in that way, it was kind of super refreshing, and I liked both characters. :3

Then you have Vampire Knight. I used to hope zomg that Yuki would end up with Kaname, even though Kaname is the Kurans' ancestor, he protected her, whereas Zero kind of failed in that regard (IMO). But recently, I'm very much indifferent. Somehow killing all the purebloods takes precedence over poor, innocent Yuki, and :< Zero, who's very life was totally destroyed by Kaname's plan, is the only one who stays reluctantly by her side. My alliances seem to have changed...

Well, the point in all of this is, despite not originally understanding why female leads were generally placed with the badass types, I think I get it now. These helper characters are too one-dimensional. They might always be nice or be nice until they go into some fit of rage, and go on an evil streak to win the girl back. Not cool, man. >.>; It's more out of pity that I have a tendency to like them better..

But lately, I've been rooting for the more badass-y characters, simply because those secondary characters really are too one-dimensional. I mean, Takumi is clearly not the greatest guy, but my goodness, is he WAY more interesting than Nobuo. And ironically, this kind of translates into real life... The goody-goodies are always so much more boring to be with than the more "varied" types. :\ Or at least it would seem... I think goody-goodies who fall in love with someone tend to have too much of a one-track (ahem clingy ahem) mind...

And how on earth did this entry come about?

I was tempted to read Paradise Kiss sometime this week, but I didn't get around to it until yesterday. o_o Well, I watched the drama movie during my 119 OH, and despite it being relatively wtf, slightly bland (I really think that Yazawa's manga shine during those panels that leak intense passion... and I think that was wayyyy better portrayed in the Nana movies; what with Ren and Nana, and Takumi and Hachi...), I decided I'd give it a try, because it appeared that Yukari and George would, you know, be together forever.

The manga... As I said earlier, the overall storyline was a little bland. You'd have to add in more k-drama elements to spice it up, but there were definitely a lot of passionate characters. The only one that seemed strangely out of place was Hiro, the boring guy, the smart one, the one who looks out for Yukari on the sidelines, but otherwise doesn't do shit. And how I raged, when the ending came about and Yukari was to marry him... And the only thing George could do was give them a ticket to a broadway play he was the costume designer for?!

If it ended with Yukari receiving the butterfly box and George's collection, it would've been better... More open-ended, with a hint in that direction... Kind of like Roman Holiday. I loved Roman Holiday. I didn't like the open-endedness with the most likely possibility that Anne wouldn't ever see the reporter again, but UGH, at least that wasn't definite! I'm usually all for solid who dies, who doesn't die; who ends up with who kind of endings, but my goodness!

Aside from being smart and realistic, Hiro doesn't have the many redeeming qualities of even the usual goody-goody guy in a manga. It's totally not like a fairytale!

I mean sure, you have all these Hollywood stars marrying, having widely publicized issues with each other, and then divorcing, and my goodness was that captured in Yukari and George's relationship, but... they were each others' muses! I feel like it could have worked out, what with that brilliant passion. *_*

But no. ARGHH.

Yukari failed.

Wednesday. I slept on the couch that day. =\ Sometime between the many times I "woke up", I tried to install Xilinx, but epically failed. :< At noon, there was a Microsoft info session. This time, they mentioned nothing about hardware positions, which is rather unfortunate. What exactly does that mean? I wasn't chosen to even interview for hardware last time? I didn't really understand the e-mail I got from the recruiter, since it just said that everything about hardware jobs was up in the air... >.> And it was kind of sad that both of the presenters were EEs in the year above me, and they were doing software stuff there. =\ Then why be an EE?!... Well, the main reason I went was to see if I could win an XBOX or an ArcMouse. I really wanted that ArcMouse, and if I had gotten the XBOX, I might've sold it... If there is ever a day when a Final Fantasy game comes out exclusively for the XBOX, it's the day I'll buy one, but until then, I'll stay loyal to Japanese consoles. Anyways, they ran out of guys' shirts to give out, and was originally going to pick some girls to take them, but there were maybe only 4 of us, and that would've eliminated us from the big prize drawing. :< Luckily, they decided to move on... Unluckily, I won a tumbler that was probably available at the MSFT career fair booth.. Irene, who I convinced to go, won the ArcMouse ;_;, and Yuyang won the XBOX. And we were all sitting right next to each other (unrelated to the order we gave the the raffle sheets..).

Then went to Ec and stayed in lab roughly 8 hours to help test the chip. My suggestion regarding the 20 MHz noise was on the spot. :D So I felt accomplished! xD; I also had McDonalds that night. :D

Next day: I fell asleep on the couch, but went home in the morning. Came back for golf, read up on a prof that I was interested in, because I was going to talk to him... But... that didn't really go as well as I would have liked. >.<; I felt like for all the reasons my phone interview back at the start of the month went well, this interview just kind of went ka-boom on me. :< I wasn't even asked any technical questions! But the questions made me feel super on-the-spot, and I just felt like I didn't get through well. >.< I mean, it's true. I don't really know exactly what I want to do... but I do have some non-general area I want to specialize in... Is that not enough? Is it bad to say that I also like the more entrepreneurial aspects of research? I mean, I always find the profs who have created startups to be the people I go *_* about. They're so cool!

I guess this is really when the whole issue of can you work well with x professor, regardles of the research he/she is doing comes into play.

So I came back to lab kind of dejected... And helped get some yet-unanalyzed data, before rushing to OH, in which only 3 people were there the whole time. All the people taking 119 were swamped with other class work, and this week's set is practically like 2.5 sets combined, so very few people, I would imagine, turned in things on time, and the rest probably didn't get very far along. =\... Well, some people dropped by between labs and OH for other classes, so I had some clients, but that's primarily the reason why I decided to watch ParaKiss. I was emoting about how the talk went to people in OH, forgetting that one person who had walked in was someone I didn't want to discuss these matters with... Eep.

So I drove back, and I think I made Costis mad at me. >.< Waii~ Didn't mean to sound insensitive. :(

And spent the morning/early afternoon not doing anything/reading ParaKiss...

But then I decided to go to lab at 4PM (was tempted to not go at all since I didn't have class...), and stayed until 10PM. It's hard helping when you don't really know how the chip/PCB works.... I really need to familiarize myself with all of that. =\ And... I think this was too big of a project to be someone's first project... with several blocks designed by other people... testing it and getting a working outcome seems to be rather difficult... =\ I mean, the rest have got to be chip issues, rather than PCB issues... and possibly some test setup issues... >.<;;

Anyways, I feel super rusty when it comes to analog designs, I've got to get time domain and switched cap analysis down, and yeah... I don't really know how to design transistor-level digital logic, except for your standard inverter, nand, nor, and I guess and/or, etc... Then again, I guess that's enough? Basic building blocks FTW!

I seem to be oscillating between getting a PhD seems way cool to maybe I like doing higher level stuff... I guess it depends. Research is cool in the context of interesting business ventures, is on the line of how I feel. That's why I don't understand people who go into really theory-heavy fields. You publish a paper, and who knows if applications will come about in a reasonable time period?

ASCIT setup some fake ice skating rink (you know, with those artificial pad-like things that aren't actually cold...). I went with the grad students in my lab to check it out, but most of us didn't stay long. As I was walking, I felt someone yank my shoulder. D: You'd expect maybe a poke (well, maybe because I poke), but it was much rougher than that, and I was totally displease to find out that it was Michael trying to get my attention. D: Maybe this is a dual standard, since I poke people a lot, but man, I can see girls poking people, but... unless we're like BFFs, I feel that it's super strange for a guy to yank on your shoulder while you're walking past him. >.>; It's not the usual scenario of girl turns back to guy on purpose, guy yanks her shoulder in a WTF face me kind of attitude... It was just a o_O who the beep was that intent on making me notice this person's presence. And the other day, he asked me if I knew anything about LEGOLand. Did he want to ask me to join him? Or was that supposed to be some conversation starter? LEGOLand really is for pansies or 5 year olds.

Okay, maybe I'm overthinking this, and he really doesn't mean anytihng, but all of this is awfully suspicious.

Which reminds me of a so-called "friend" who obviously had a "crush" on me in HS, but it was a very perverted kind of infatuation (according to his LJ), and I was super grossed out by it, and ignored him. ew. That's one of the reasons why I now have this major lolicon alert signal. D:

Anyways, I think this might be the last free Saturday I'll have in a while. That makes me super sad, because I've put in 20+ hrs this week, I've still got that report to write... And... despite this being a 9 unit "class," I think he wants me to come in on weekends. :<

I feel obligated to do so, but otherwise I don't have to do anything and I can still graduate, so why am I doing this? These last couple of weeks have been so nice... But maybe I'm getting too lazy...

I would also like to mention that somehow my finger are hurting from gripping the golf club too tightly.

Sometimes, I wonder how "ordinary" my life is. Are everyday events even worth writing about?

So yes, I bought the $275 tickets, then proceeded to do very little for the remainder of the weekend. :\

I turned down a Chinese New Year dinner invite, a coffee invite, and an invite to dinner in Old Pasadena, because I wasn't around campus, and I had originally intended to finish my progress report... Well, that didn't really happen. :x

The two manga I forgot before were Akagami no Shirayukihime and Kamisama Hajimemashita.

I think I read some pretty decent manga over the weekend. I FINALLY read Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan, and there was one short story in Seishun Survival that I liked (I'm surprised I didn't read it earlier o_O)... But man, the first was SO good, dramatic, and like... deep. :O I also read Cat Street, without realizing that it was by the same manga-ka that did Hana Yori Dango. I'm so happy that someone who appeared to be the Rui to the main character's Domyoji actually won the main girl in the end. I was rooting for Kouichi from the minute I knew things wouldn't work out with Touya. xD Ah, and a new chapter of Bokura ga Ita was released. I'm happy that Yano will get a much-deserved happy ending. The manga was so intense! Now if only Nana would return from hiatus, because my god... Ren died, Nana went berserk, and then there were a bunch of these flashforwards that made no sense... D: I thought they'd be cleared up, but then the hiatus came about.

Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to have a boyfriend like Takumi. :O...

Sunday, I went over to my grandparents' place. I used to look forward to going there, because my grandpa would take out his stamp collections, paintings, and the likes and show me, and I was really into that stuff back then. Heck, I kind of still am, although I've been spending my money frivolously on concert tickets instead of things I would consider to have longterm value. But lately, it just makes me frustrated and sad. My grandpa especially comes off as a lot more sickly than my grandma who passed away ever felt. You can always kind of feel some sense of hopelessness surrounding such a matter, and it's not a great feeling. It's kind of like I try to avoid thinking about these things, but then I feel obligated to go, and I get into a fairly foul mood right after. >.<

Yeah, huh, it's the first year I won't be getting one of those red pouches of money from my grandma. =\ I remember she would make me bow to a picture of my grandpa and great-grandmother sometimes on Chinese New Year. I never really understood respect for someone deceased to that degree... especially when I didn't know the person well... >.< And it just makes me feel kind of awkward and uncomfortable...

Oh, I sent an e-mail back to a prof, but it was a week late, so he hasn't responded. Ahh~ Hence the bad about replying notion. >.<

Anyways, I went back to campus to grade after spending a couple of hours learning to LaTeX and getting some part of my report written (like 1/4? haha... >.>;), and that took until slightly past midnight... Except I haven't run simulations yet, because I have a Mac that's not capable of running a virtual machine well, and the lab computers don't have a working version of the program installed. D: Well, so I reran everyone's synthesis to get some info, but yeah, I've got to do that...

Then I slept on the couch, woke up to EE7 people coming into lab to work on their HWs, and luckily they were people I knew, otherwise, man... 1) I know pretty much all of the junior/senior EEs; 2) S'more EE's probably have already seen me sleeping thanks to 51, but 3) None of the people in EE7 are actually EEs, and I don't know most of them, so it feels extremely weird to fall asleep/wake up to people (other than Glen and the janitor) in the room. D:

And Glen was complaining about how I turned the thermostat up, and he was roasting when he came in. xD;

So yeah, I watched the new episode of Last Exile. More action! Yay! The thing is, I don't remember the original LE having a really slow dead period, and I just feel like the plot itself is meh, and it's just not moving along fast enough to be particularly "wow" exciting. >.>;

And then... after "supplemental" OH (i.e. people bugging me about stuff outside of the OH times I'm paid for...), and just bumming around lab, and talking to this one girl about Glen being a good mentor-figure...

Startups, wars, country turmoil, politics. Glen, Noddy, and I went to eat at Outback (really strange combination of people btw lol...), because Glen owed us a TA dinner lol... So we got there, and I was like *_* why are there so many chain restaurants in this region?! Why did I not know about this place before?! It'd be great to take a big group of people out to eat there... I ordered a 12 oz steak and a shirley temple, and I'm still feeling super stuffed (the effects of it) >36 hrs later. D: But it was fun! I just want to see GG's car sometime, because Noddy drove.

Then I went home, woke up, was almost late to golf, but very few people showed up, presumably because of the career fair... And wow! I actually saw an improvement in my hitting! When I was actually able to get the ball in the air (~40% of the time?), I was pretty consistent in where I hit. :o I think it's really just like being comfortable swinging, and the biggest reason I don't get the ball into the air is because I'm too close to the ball sometimes, and then I hit it at a funky angle... You can kind of tell in the middle of your swing if your arms went up the right way... That or maybe it's because I've built some upper body strength finally, so my arms don't hurt anymore and wobble around as much.

Afterwards, I went to Milikan to print out some resumes, because I wanted career fair swag, and I didn't just want to go and grab free stuff... >.>; In retrospect, maybe that would've been a better thing to do, because I don't really want to do any more interviews; granted I mostly went to software companies, who I doubt will give my EE-heavy resume another glance. Then I did something really stupid. So last time, I went to the Nvidia booth, because I was interested in working there, and the guy I spoke to kind of just... brushed me over, after asking if I had any digital transistor-level layout experience, but I'd imagine that very few undergrads actually do. D: So he took my resume without giving me one of those infamous quizzes, and said he'd keep my resume on file. Originally, I was just waiting for an EE friend to finish up talking to Nvidia, but then I overheard another friend talking to a recruiter about like 114, 119, etc. etc. and it seemed like the guy actually cared. I brought up my story, and the recruiter was like, "Oh yeah, you should take 181 too"... So then I felt the sudden urge to talk to him/hand in a resume just for the heck of it (mostly because he seemed to really get the Caltech EE mentality, and how like Techers wouldn't be satisfied with validation jobs, etc.), and he asked what I was interested in, so I said mixed-signal. Then he went to grab a quiz for me, but I didn't really want to take it, so I just asked if I could just give him my resume... and then he looked at me with this WTF look, and asked if I was just giving him my resume for fun... >.>; So I said I already accepted a job offer, but I was wondering if they kept that resume for > 1 year, and he said you should resubmit at the next career fair yadda yadda, then Alex comes along, and is like yeahhh she already got a job at Apple blah blah... Mind your own business plzkthx. I felt like a fool, and somehow it came off as my having a greater-than-thou feeling, but mann... I just wanted to talk to him. Guess I went about it the wrong way. I didn't even get any free stuff (mostly because I got it all last career fair, after being rejected... D:) There was a company from Japan there! And I was like, yeah I worked in Atsugi at NTT, and they were like OH, rival! NTT kenkyuu-sha xD. And Jama and I spent too long talking to FB, that we missed the Synaptics raffle by 3 minutes. D: You had to be present to win, so the Synaptics people had a bunch of tickets they pulled out in their hand. Man, if we got there on time, I wonder if I would've won that Chromebook. :< The guy I talked to was there again, and after reminding him that I had talked to him previously, he said he remembered me (I wonder if it was out of respect, or he legitimately did...), and he said that now they actually had intern positions finalized, and stuff...

Then I got back to Moore, hung out in SB for a while, got tracked down by Yishun while I was off to a meeting with Manuel, randomly saw that Nvidia guy on 3rd floor Moore O_o /awkward, and yeah... I have a Feb. 7 deadline for the report, and I'll be helping Manuel test his chip. I'm actually kind of excited. I can't really do much with my board now that he's taken over all the test equipment... And Matt dropped by, so we had a long talk about random things until roughly 6:30, when I said I couldn't make it to go to the Ath with them, Sergii, and Juhwan, but then I decided I could be an irresponsible TA and postpone OH for 1.5 hrs... and joined them for a Kobe burger + popcorn + a glass of Margarita. I didn't feel "sick" from that, but it wasn't that great tasting. I did get really red, and I felt like what I would expect to feel from consuming alcohol, I guess. I don't think I'd ever do much more than a glass, because I don't really want to get drunk and have to throw up. That sounds so bad. D: People were surprised that I have almost weekly 2-3 hr conversations with Glen, believing that long conversations with him would turn into hexcode eventually lol... Which reminds me... I want to watch Philadelphia Story.

I went to OH feeling kind of light-headed, and I made a few of them wait for me >.< Ack... But I think they got their questions answered, so yeah...

I went to sleep on the couch, while the 7 people were still around, except I told them about my situation, so it was cool, except some guy showed up later and just had to use the station by the couch, and he didn't leave until quite late, but I just kind of pretended to sleep >..; so awkward. Usually, no one uses that station, because that aside, the couch area is blocked off from the rest of the lab. :x

And then I woke up to Glen coming in and said hi to the janitor at around 5:30.

Yep.. Week to date.

1) I want to see the Northern Lights
2) How old is too old? Some people I know are kinda interesting lol

It's always the most daunting task, and the more I freak out about it, the more I put it off, and the more difficult it becomes. D: (since I'm sure people will be like wtf, why did you send me an e-mail a whole month after I last got back to you?!)

I suck. :<

To quote FB:

after nearly 3 hours of ticket-buying agony: $275 pool circle tickets. D: oh my dear, i've gone crazy. kmf had better be drop dead amazing this year. D:

^ I actually had to get my friend to get it for me @ the physical box office. D:

I got a bunch of calluses from golf practice. >.

Maybe this is in preparation for the Kenshin LA. *_* But man, the dialect is really getting to me. >.<

I ended up going to Daikokuya yesterday, but instead of ordering ramen, I mistakenly ordered pork bowl. xD

KMF tomorrow! :o

"But before you jump to conclusions, note that the study only looked at what women hoped to get — the reality may be quite different. And when it comes to falling in love, poor guys do seem to come out on top every time. Jane falls for Tarzan, Johnny gets Baby in Dirty Dancing, and Noah steals Allie from her rich fiancé in The Notebook. In all the most romantic love stories, the wealthy man gets dropped and the guy with the hole in his pocket gets the girl. And by taking a look at how money affects relationships, it’s pretty clear why. Below, check out our list of potential problems to watch out for."

This is so not true in dramas/anime/manga. D:

Should not have stayed nearly 12 hrs helping people to debug. At least I felt like I was useful to 90% of the people there. I feel bad that I couldn't help Max much. >.<;;

Gotta get working on thesis... D: Found the motivation; just need to get this report done. ;_;

Ah, and as I was driving back, I saw people filming :O Big/bright light! :o

Weekly recap~

Friday, I went into lab pretty late to get some things done for my report, and then I went to Mi Piace with Sergii and Manuel. :D Except I had an SD app due at midnight, so we had a rush dinner. Whatever I ordered had a lot of clam shells, but they were mostly empty. :( But it did taste pretty good! Then I submitted my app (I'm pretty sure I'm going to be rejected without having received a single recommendation letter... 'cause it's past the season, and profs are prone to forgetting, and I am hesitant to remind them >.<; and if that's the case, why did I reply and wast $80? :( Well, I thought it would've been cool, and there's one prof that seems pretty awesome *_*)

Anyways, I slept in Moore that night, because I was waiting on HWs from Glen, and I went back to my house to check out my Apple offer packet *_* Ahaha...

Actually, I was hoping they would pay me more :< /slight disappointment...

BUT, yeah, I was holding off on contacting more people, because well, if you couldn't tell, I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to work for Apple, although I got one fairly interesting offer for an interview at Oracle. o_O (I'd be interested in that in the future...)

KMF tickets on sale on Saturday! + Apparently Micky is in LA?! omgggg!!!

So yeah, I think I stayed at home most of Saturday and most of Sunday... Just reading Kimi ni Todoke (very realistic, a little slow, but pretty decent)... There are 2 other series I'm following, but don't think I've listed on my LJ, except I can't remember their titles, so once they come up again on one of the reader sites, maybe I should remember to take their names down...

Then Sunday night, I went over to Page to work on our Ec presentation, except Brian and I didn't get much done. It's kind of strange how somehow we started talking again, and we actually became partners for stuff. :o But now things are OK. Jeff told me about Columbia~ I wonder if I should have applied... If nothing else, at least I'd be able to visit and check the campus out... maybe.

Anyways, the weird part was, Ka came into the room, and I guess he intended to ask Brian if he wanted anything to eat, and then he asked me, because was there... Ehh, last time I was talking to someone, I came to the conclusion that I don't really care any more, and everything's kind of behind me, so I actually talked to him :o and yeah... ate food that he cooked. :O Weird!

I walked past Doris too, but ehh, I dunno... I don't think I'll ever get over what happened with her. >.>; It just felt like she kept on adding more salt onto the wounds... and yeah...

So, we had this race: Ka by running, me and Brian by driving... and Ka beat us to Fresh & Easy D: Heck, even Albert beat us, by walking. >.>; And I just epically failed at parking... at Ralphs, because I didn't know where the other parking lot was.

And then I went to Lucky Baldwin's with Shyam. Yes! I was carded! And I got to sit at the bar counter thingy. *_* xD;; We had a first round of red wine... It was a bit too bitter and not sweet enough (maybe because I really like ice wine...), but it was decent. Shyam paid first, and then I paid for some apple cider and he got some kind of beer... Same reaction though >.>; I'm ok for a little bit, and then my head just feels :x and you know that sensation when your throat starts feeling weird right before you want to throw up when you have the stomach flu? >.<;; I don't even think it was my stomach... it just felt like my brain was playing tricks on me. D: Worst part is, wine aside, I didn't really touch much of the cider. D: Then we went to Annenberg... And I had more red wine (super bitter D:)... Lately, I've been having strange conversations... somewhat relating to the lack of boyfriend matter... But man, I've realized, people who get super touchy feely after drinking too much are... >.>; I mean, it's ok sort of, but they are really pushing the limit of my comfort zone. >.>; Get slightly further, and here comes a SLAP. Yeah...

So Monday, I woke up, and I'm not entirely sure what I did. Oh, I went to lunch with Murtaza at San Sai, then I came back to listen to Matt's practice candidacy, and man, I was really curious about the new stuff he was working on, but I had to go for TA meeting with Glen. :< Then Raul and I went to Kabuki. *_* Shirley Temple > alcohol. Ironically, I didn't like shirley temple much when I was younger... We had more interesting conversation, basically ending with the idea that maybe we'd hit up some kind of mall some time with the intent to make friends of the opposite gender. You know, if someone walking around the mall seemed interesting, we'd try to strike a conversation. It's a good way to get out of your comfort zone and learn to be more sociable? xD

Tuesday, I had golf, and the part of my middle finger that was already kind of sensitive from last week started bleeding. :< Then I graded for a really long time, because people had weird code... I got McDonalds and Raul got Panda... and I came down for OH. I went over to Page to not get much done (I'd finished up a good portion of my presentation in the morning, after forcing myself to wake up early...)... And then yeah, graded until ~5AM, slept until ~7:30 AM, and finished the presentation around noon. Brian got me udon! :D We gave the presentation, I mailed off my Apple offer acceptance, and then stayed around to help with 119. Maybe I should change my OH, because people like Wednesday OH...

Then I talked to Glen. We started talking about old movies again~ And how he likes Humphrey Bogart, etc. I found out that he's had gfs since college :O LOL... And he showed me this monkey cartoon on Youtube... Something Links...

Yep, then I crashed for nearly 12 hours, and was almost late for PE... >.>; And I was going to go to 128, but then people started asking me about stuff for 119, and yeah...

Here I am typing this entry. Once I'm done, I guess I'll be holding extra OH. >.<;;

And yeah, SOPA blackout made me realize how much I rely on Wiki... And I didn't even think I used it that much. D: RIP Megaupload...

Dropdropdropdropdrop...

Monday, I came to Tech to have a half hour meeting with Glen about 119. D: And then I proceeded to dinner with Jama @ Teaspots. No one else could/wanted to go. :( But it was a fun 2 hours brainstorming about startups and the like, so I'm happy. I want to do this startup business nowwwwww. *_*

Tuesday, I came to class, sucked at golf, and had OH until 10 PM. Before OH, I was really really really craving McDonalds french fries, so you can imagine where I went. :P I bumped into Raul there, and then I had OH company. xD; We got kinda stuck on a problem that was new to the set, but I think the end result should work... I also had Jamba Juice, didn't go to 2 invited dinners (one was CDS dinner; another was dinner at the Ath--you have no idea how much I wanted fries *_*)... Yeah, then I froze while chatting with Glen and Raul outside of Moore until roughly 11PM.

Wednesday, I woke up feeling sucky and sick, and my neck and shoulders hurt like beep. :( So I went to class, got stuck on a really bad presentation next week (super heavy theoretical econ wtfbbqq...). Thankfully, I can plow through it with Brian sometime this weekend.. And yeah, came down to 010 to crash on the couch, because I was feeling super tired and under the weather (surprisingly, the prof remembered my name...)... And after chatting with Glen and Raul, waiting for TA OH to end, and stuff... I went with Raul to Wakano (sp?), some Chinese/Japanese restaurant near Cheesecake Factory. Raul ordered sushi, but didn't like it. D: It was kinda funny watching him eat hahaha. xD; Not that I really liked the salmon...

Today, I sucked at PE some more. I think the coach gave up on me... I skinned my finger or otherwise had something nasty happen to it (maybe it blistered and I popped it all within the hour)... Then I rushed to group meeting. For the first time in a lonnng time, I was actually excited about senior thesis. o_O I managed to drop half of the smoked salmon sandwich that I got :( And decided I'd probably severely underload and concentrate on research... I went to an RF seminar, then overstayed TA office hours again. I think I finally figured out the answer to a new problem... >.>; Probably shouldn't have "helped" people as much as I did... I also got Thai fod, hoping that it would taste less Thai-like, but that wasn't the case. D:

On the up side, I had a grad school phone interview on Wednesday. I got a nice letter from SC yesterday morning :P, and I'll be getting a nice package from Apple soon. *_* Win!

Still have 2 more apps to go...

I went through several boxes of papers to look for an old set, only to realize I had taken it out at the start of fall term. Eepers. My room looks like a tornado went straight through it. @_@ So much stuff on my mind once again! ARGHH.

I have 8 more units of silly classes before I am able to meet all my graduation requirements. I think I would've been way better off if I finished my PE and Ec requirements last term. Heck, I could be doing something crazy in Japan or the likes... Instead, there's this really horrible sinking feeling that's kind of made me feel really confused... I've finally gotten into break mode, but now I'm overcome with pressure to pull myself together before the finale. I have apps to finish, job applications to complete, more legitimate classes to decide to take... But senioritis has hit me REALLY FREAKING HARD. It's like... the moment I finished my first round of applications, I went plop. :x

Anyways, the last part of break:

Tom came to visit from San Diego, so I wanted to hang out. I went with Tom, Yuehan, some former Techers, and a bunch of juniors to New Capital for dimsum. It was pretty hilarious. xD; I thought Yuehan got out of the car to get a ticket for the long wait, but instead, he parked himself at an empty parking spot to help me get parking... at the expense of the car in front of me. Oh my goodness. D: /guilt...

The 11? of us at close to 30 some different dishes, and it still didn't cost more than $11? or was it $14 per person... Pretty legit...

Then we went to 99 Ranch, and I drove Tom to Little Tokyo. I like Little Tokyo, but the Internet kind of makes it meaningless for collectors... and frankly, the food's not that great there. =\ Sure I really like Honda-ya, but otherwise, there's not much reason to go there except to get away from Tech (which I guess is as good a reason as any). Tom gave me the Hikaru no Go Illustrations book as a late birthday present *_* Oh sweet, the BookOff at San Diego sounds super legit!

So yes, the rest of the afternoon consisted of Yuehan putting way too much Gatsby (Kimura Takuya~) in my hair (well, that happened before the Little Tokyo run), and Yuehan/Tom helping me to wash my hair out in a Dabney bathtub. xD; No, no, it wasn't inappropriate at all... xD I leaned forward and enjoyed being sprayed with warm water from a shower head onto my head. :D

Then I watched Project Runway until it was time for us to go pub crawling. *_*

A few of us went to some Irish pub in OldPas, and ordered some ale. I'm surprised I wasn't carded. Maybe the glasses made me look old? But I feel a little unsatisfied that I have only been able to make use of my over 21 status once. No "in your face" moments last night. :( The ale was pretty good, as was the smoked salmon, but lately, I've been having trouble eating somewhat. >.>; Anyways, turns out that issue I had in Japan wasn't due to self-cooked okonomiyaki... :( I probably can't drink beer in large quantities without feeling super nauseous (but not your typical hot/consumed too much alcohol type of feeling :x)... Maybe I'm allergic to some ingredient in beer. D: Nooooo~ Considering I like beer. Well, sort of. I like it for the first few sips, and then it just gets kind of bland, but I guess I can really only take the first few sips. >.>; Yeah, because I remember going into Tokyu Hands that day, and feeling like I would faint if I didn't find some place to sit, and then my stomach kind of died. It was sort of similar yesterday... >.>; Except it didn't really hit me until we got into Gyu Kaku and I ordered a peach soju cocktail, but after eating a bit of raw meat, the thumping coming from the extreme bass (clubbing music?) drove me crazy, and I felt like my head was just exploding... >.>; And then I started feeling really sick to my stomach again... Bleh. But it went away as we walked back to Tech. I didn't actually have that much to drink--only a mug of beer... I decided it wasn't wise to finish the cocktail, even though I'm sure I had more than that during the Christmas party...

Then I watched more Project Runway with the intention of maybe going home by 4AM, but I was like I don't want to walk all the way to the athletic center parking lot to drive home at 4am... So I camped out in Raymond's room, and then after going to In-n-Out with people, I drove home.

Oh, I guess I also got boba from Teaspots on Saturday.

Anyways, since I've been home, I've just been sort of panicked about stuff. I have to respond to several rather pressing e-mails, something I've been avoiding :x... And finish apps... and maybe do homework for a class that I want to take, but at the same time, I haven't taken the prerequisite class >.>; nor do I remember all that much from a pre-prerequisite class I took 4 terms ago... :x

Winter break wasn't spectacular, but frankly, it's the best I've had since my cousin came 2 years ago. Sure, anything would've been better than last winter break. The only problem is... I finally got used to lazing around, not doing anything productive, and break's now over. I don't have class today, but I should be going into lab to get stuff done (although first I've gotta get used to learning LaTeX...)... So yeah, guess that means I'm skipping out... My shoulders, arms, thighs, etc. all hurt. D: I thought golf would be super chill, but I guess not. :< /fail...

A couple of things worth mentioning:

I got a Christmas card from Neeli and Chris. :D I always feel super happy after that, because it feels like people actually think of me as more than just an acquaintance. xD; ...

I went to Islands with Raul, and we ended up having a pretty deep conversation about relationships and the whatnot. xD;; It kinda went... yeah... really... deep, and it's definitely not the kind of conversation I'd have with the usual kind of people. o_O Maybe my cousin... I was also SUPER FREAKING HUNGRY. :< Shirley temples~ <3

Tomorrow's robotics kickoff... I have a lot of things I have yet to do... and I think I've kind of messed up my relationships with certain important entities as a result. >.< Why is it that the more important the task, the more freaked out I get?! This didn't used to happen. :( But maybe it's because lately, I've been worrying too much about this and that. I'm finally happier, but gosh, I really need to clear my mind of things... >.<;;

I have a web startup idea that I kind of want to pursue, but I wish I had someone to work with me on it... Rather, I'm signed up for 47 units, but probably half of those units are going to go bye-bye, since I need 8 units (3 PE, 5 Ec) to graduate... Just gotta stick to research, and man... I really should take 128, but at the same time, it's been a full term since I last had weekly sets, and now I'm just kind of... I want to try more things... The startup class I signed up for... didn't really make me want to take the class and get inducted into the formalities of start ups, but it did really make me want to get my idea into motion...

Just need time, motivation, and yeah... some positive feedback.

I realize that even typing is making me hurt. Ouch. What did I do?!

So i might be hanging out with some friends tomorrow; we'll see how that plays out...

Now, to copy-paste from FB:

went to the grove, farmers market, the beverly center, and century city mall. didn't buy anything, walked a ton, and saw a dreamy looking asian guy. ahahaha :< why didn't i have the courage to talk to himmm? D: also had quite the adventure looking for aroutin's car on the wrong floor of the parking garage... >.< steven and i found it first :D...

Yessirree. I wish I did more of that during break. I walked around Century City Mall TWICE just so I could see that guy again. He had a very good fashion sense, sweet hair, and a really cute face! zomg! I wish I asked him for his FB sn or something of the sort... waii~ but alas, I didn't, and now I'm stuck wondering if he was actually a stall attendant. :< And yes, we were in quite the state of panic when we couldn't find Aroutin's car. o_O It just felt super weird when the surrounds didn't click to me, and after maybe half an hour of searching, we decided to split up, and originally, I was going to go upstairs to retrace our steps, but then I saw an ad, and I'm like wait a minute, are you sure we didn't come up from the level below?! o_O So I go down to the next floor of the parking garage, and within 15 seconds, I see the car. lololol. xD;

And:

do not go to vegas for NYE if you don't plan to party hard. 4.5 hrs drive to vegas + 4.5 hrs of non-stop walking to/on the strip + pink panther that had too little vodka and too much artificial flavoring + 30 min taxi back to hotel at 10:30PM for $25... + fireworks from 5th floor of hotel ~2 mi from strip + nearly 6 hrs of non-stop walking today following dimsum + one roller coaster ride (NY,NY) + 1 hr art gallery visit (i'm reliving kdrama scenes, mind you) + 5.5 hrs of driving back in meh traffic from 5:30pm onwards = my feet/shoulders hate me. what was i thinking?!

I don't know if I should feel bad... On one hand, they got into an accident the night before, and had to take a plane back to LA... On the other hand, if they were too tired to do anything, why bother making me drive all the way?! Just to recoup some of their losses in paying for the hotel?! -_-... Sigh. We didn't even stay to watch fireworks on the Strip. :( Instead, I had to watch it from the hotel room, because they were too tired. omggggggggggggg... *pulls hair out* And all I heard was complaining and whining about being tired to do this and that and that Vegas wasn't quite his thing... And then he asked for my car keys to read in my car, and after I rushed back, I found out he never even went there and I was locked out of my car... And on the whole way back, he was being such a horrible backseat driver. I know I suck, but way to make me even more nervous and frustrated.

I can't say it was a completely wasted trip. I went on a roller coaster with a loop, and umm... yeah... art galleries are... I feel like I appreciated them more as a child. =\

Ah, 2 more things:

For the first time in a while, I didn't watch any part of Kouhaku. D: And lo' and behold, the red team won! :O

And Yoshiki's composing the Grammy's theme?! WTFBBQ. YOSHIKI, HOW DO YOU DO IT?! propropro... superPRO!

New friends are cool though~ Weee :D

/ragequit.

Okay, so I've been paying for the hosting of my HS robotics team's website for the last who knows how many years, and they start wanting my account info and this and that, but I'm like.. wait. This is the account infor for all of my personal sites. No way am I going to give it away like that D: I already give you guys FTP access and admin privileges to at least 1 MySQL database, and for whatever you need, that should more than suffice. But no, you wan CPanel, because you can't do things manually?! What luxury! Go and write some scripts to do this and that, otherwise, why the fuck would I feel like responding to an e-mail with this title?

Hey, did we ever hear from this Angie person who has the login information...

Or this within the e-mail:

Of greater concern, did anyone ever hear back from the woman (Angie is her name I believe) who set up and paid for the hosting of...

I dunno. In one sense, I feel like he's not addressing me as though I'm still just a kid or a barely-out-of-high-school/college person...

But way to go for addressing me as "this Angie person" or "the woman"... That sounds... so frustratingly demeaning.

D:

Winter break. It's been quite dull, for the most part. Sure, there was that initial push to get apps and interviews done... Then there's also been a lot of failing on my part to respond to e-mails and such. Uhh... D:

But yeah, I didn't go on my planned Vegas/skiing trip... I didn't skip out on holidays at home for a vacation to San Diego or Vancouver. Instead, I've spent the bulk of my vacation staring at home reading manga, watching anime, watching dramas or variety shows...

It's like fandom has become my guilty pleasure, and I can't get away from it. >.>; Or more like whenever I don't feel like doing something, I switch over to fandom...

I started reading a manga called 恋空. It's based off of a cell phone novel, and has been apparently very big in Japan, although it's kind of like Taiyou no Uta or 1 Litre of Tears... :< = Majorly sad ending, but it's good!

I've also probably read several hundred one shots and other series, none of which have been that *_* for me to want to name.

I've been following Kanojo wa Uso ga Aishisugiteru for a while now. It's entertaining. :P

And then I have my usual Dengeki Daisy, Bokura ga Ita...

Kaname is finally back in Vampire Knight. I feel like he's going to end up being the Yuki and Zero's going to be the Kyou... I was originally rooting for Yuki x Kaname, but now I'm not sure. =\

I think the whole student-teacher relationship in キスよりも早く is freaking adorable. xD Not that Kazuma's old...

Ao Haru Ride is cute too! Strobe Edge-ness <3

I guess I tend to like manga by the same people...

Stardust Wink and Love so Life...

Yeah, I guess I've picked up quite a few titles in addition to my weekly WSJ cravings. xD

But that wasn't supposed to be the point of this post. Rather, I'm SUPER excited about the latest episode of Last Exile! We FINALLY get to see AL and DIO IN ACTION *_* And what's her face turned into some Federation puppet is quite reminiscent of Dio under Maestro... Now if only Claus and Lavie would appear... and heck, throw in Alex's ghost or like Alex with an eyepatch. >. watch drama -> read manga, etc. etc.

/tear.

Anyways, here's to hoping that 2012 is a good year~ and an especially good year for concerts~ <3

BEAST, L'arc~en~ciel, X, KMF, YFCz, ??? :DDD

Oh, did have this crazy dream about going back in time to the 1950s, but somehow it looked like we were in this John Wayne setting in the Wild West... and there was this Thunder Mountain-like train ride... yadda yadda... And I met this guy who looked like Jaejoong <3 except the whole of the dream was kind of depressing, because everyone split up and got lost...

Now that I've turned 21 and such (haha)...

I still need to venture out and attempt to discover what's good about SoCal. I really hope Henry & Norman are coming today~ They're the coolest! Lalala~

So I suddenly recalled going to that local boba place almost every afternoon in high school to have boba while studying for AP tests, but secretly because I wanted to see this one Korean guy that looked really hot. >.>; I don't know why I went to such great lengths, and yet never once got to really talk to him (okay, so if I remember correctly, he screwed up on the amount of change he gave me once...)... Well, he disappeared the next school year, and I was sad, but I kept coming...

Apparently Watsuki-sensei is doing a "reboot" of the Kenshin manga o_O !!! MORE KENSHIN x TOMOE PLZ. Oh man~ I wish he would come back to AX. I was stupid and didn't go that year. ARGH!

I had this crazy dream last night~ I was with Alan, Eric, and ughh one other person I can't remember anymore. :x And we were wandering around somewhere (like a 60s-80s themed theater or something...), and there were Tenimyu tickets for $8! Except the concert/play/whatever was at midnight until 4AM. D: And then I woke up...

You know, I think I have pretty decent memory. Sure, it's not quite photographic, but I remember quite a few events as though they were yesterday. Today, my childhood friend came over for Christmas dinner. The last time I saw her was at my grandma's funeral, and before that, it was probably at the end of high school. D: I say childhood friend, because I have a few family friends that I've known since my 1-year-old birthday party that I still see semi-yearly, but I've known Melissa since 2nd grade. :o We reminisced about random classmates... and apparently, some of them became mothers in high school and college :\...

So, I had this random flashback to academic decathlon in 7th grade, I think it was. It's not quite the same type of decathlon that high school students (less the people from my high school) participate in, but ehh... it seemed like a pretty big deal back then to Catholic junior high students. I think I ended up getting 4th in some music/fine arts category. Actually, that's how I first discovered Norman Rockwell and his Saturday Evening Post illustrations. I thought they were pretty cool, but ughhh~ for the big event, I remember getting 8 questions right in a row, and then epic failing at the last 2, and I think the last one was determining the year that he painted an astronaut painting (or maybe it was the name...). :( I had had that image engraved into my brain, because it was the last page of the book I had read, but I couldn't remember.

That, and I went to a couple of their Christian youth or whatever organization type meetings, and, as I recall, the first time I went, I think some of the 8th graders I knew were graduating, and they told us to say something about people we knew... So back then, I was pretty good at singing, and I had a lot of solos (back when stage fright was less of an issue for me...)... and err... whenever I had a solo, this boy would also have one, and his voice was just the sweetest... So I complimented him on that, even though I didn't know him that particularly well, and I'm pretty sure he got super embarrassed. Hahahaha...

I heard some interesting stories today...

You know what? Life's not that bad these days.

molina, decath

Suddenly, I couldn't think of LJ friend list, and instead, the only thing that came to me was FB wall. o_o

I read this kind of disturbing, suppper freaking sad manga (not fully scanlated, but I know what happens >.>;). Now I'm just feeling kind of crappy from doing so. :x eff...

I have two pet projects I want to work on this term, both related to websites and stuff on that nature... One personal; the other... not so much.

Just need motivationnnn D: wtfbbqqqq wooo...

uhhh... Yes, sorry for spamming my f-list.

Hope you guys are having a wonderful hoiday season ♥

http://www.hlj.com/product/SIT89391 Tenipuri One Coin Figures!!! <3

Two things:

1) I was staring at birds the other day, and I remembered the parakeets I used to have... Somehow we decided to name them Lucky and Mary. :x Then there was this one time where we found this injured baby bird... and took care of it for a while. We let it go, and never saw it again.

2) I had an awesome time hanging out with Dalar and Gus today. Catching up with high school friends~~ I haven't done that since I hung out with Brian over the summer and briefly saw Ryan when I went to get my SURF poster made. :O

We went to this random coffee shop that closed at 6, then to my favorite Japanese restaurant... and then to this froyo place, despite it being 50 degrees and windy. D: But we girl-talked for 3 hours straight. xDD;; This is the kind of thing I wish I did more of in high school and college. :< Oh life, why do you hate me so? :(

It's a really good light novel/manga series. I definitely recommend it! :) Out of all of the random things I've picked up in the last year or so, this is definitely one of the more interesting ones. :O I really need to work on my website again. I'm not planning on coming to lab next week, so hopefully, that will happen. >.

You know, in Japan, your 20th year is supposed to be special, but as for me, it sucked, and I'm glad I'm now 21. Cheers to a new non-end-of-the-world year filled with fun, happiness, romance, blah blah blah.

Anyways, I think I'm on the verge of getting the best possible birthday/New Year's present for myself.

*_*

Got to wait until start of January for a confirmation, but yeah...

I went to lab, got stuff mostly working, and la-di-da.

Going back to lab for maybe 5 hrs, and then coming back, because my mom's having her co-workers over. :\


I spent an hour getting back to people who wished me happy birthday on FB. It felt great! I feel like some huge burden has been lifted off of my chest. @_@

SHOONIEEEE <3

Lalalala...

I returned to lab to get some work done. At first, I felt kind of nervous being around the grad students I hadn't really seen in a while (due to being preoccupied with other work..), but now things are going okay, and stuff is starting to work.

Finally interfaced my mixers with LVDS outputs. Yatta!

It's been a long time since I've posted, although it really hasn't felt that long. I've been in a constant state of panic since then, which has probably been the sole reason for my not getting sick yet (it's a record!). I think this is the first fall term in ages in which I haven't caught a cold, although I'm sure this statement will jinx everything as I can already feel my nose stuffing up. >.>

Ok, so maybe it's also been the fact that I so rarely get out of Moore and I keep the thermostat at around 77-78 degrees...

~_~

Moore Subbasement has been my prison for most of this term. I sleep there, I eat there, I work there, I pull countless all-nighters there... There's no sunlight and no ventilation. :(

Anyways, so...

Since my last post:

December 5: I had my senior thesis presentation. It surprisingly went OK, when I thought I died... :< I had some major technical difficulties (I think the world is telling me to get a new laptop...)...

Then I spent the bulk of the remainder of the week getting my PCBs to order and taking a Law33 final on epic pass fail. *_*

I hate myself for leaving the trace separations at 8 mils, because I kept on shorting pins and traces, and because I had a crappy soldering iron, I also managed to rip off a couple of traces. I was a lot smarter last term, because I actually considered that when Barebones-ing my design. :(

So yes, I was stressing out a lot about getting my PCB to work, and doing a lot of last-minute programming and box-making and corrections.

Note to self: Go with the 1/8" acrylic. D:

Well, it was actually quite a bit of fun working in the 91 lab, because everyone I hadn't seen all term started showing up to work seriously on their projects, and we'd hang out and talk about random shit all the time.

What got annoying was that people kept on nagging me about serial divider. Ugh. I didn't actually look over things too thoroughly, so meh... it's also not my responsibility to debug their codes for them... They were getting frustrated at me, and I was getting frustrated at them.

I thought for sure it would be to my advantage to have people finish earlier, except only 5 people did, and even then... Noddy didn't grade all of their papers.

I guess Glen thought I wouldn't be getting that many more sets than Noddy, but my total was as follows:

19 HW 9s
17 HW 7s
4 HW 8s
2 HW 6s
1 HW 4

I think I graded probably 3 times as many sets as Noddy has, so I'm super peeved, considering my term has been, overall, a lot crappier and a lot more work-filled.

Yes, that's what I've been doing since Friday, right after apps were more or less done... And I've been stuck in Moore for the last 3 days, except I'm feeling horribly miserable and cranky from not having slept well. I had to escape and grade at Teaspots this afternoon. Luckily, I was quite productive, an finished grading all 19 sets in around 5 hrs...

>.>;

You know what else? I haven't played my 3DS yet (or opened it, for that matter).

I also had a startup idea (web-based) at the start of term, and apparently, it's been more or less realized by another team and gone public just this month. I regret not following up on my idea...

Ugh.

So what else? My 91 demo went OK, not that great...

But it was my birthday on the 9th, and at midnight, Lita and Raul brought me girly alcohol and Sapporo beer (lol)! Yes, I'm finally legal!!! I think this has been by far the most interesting birthday I've had all 4 years that I've been at Caltech, which is a little sad, considering how stressed out I was... >.>;

Anyways, after not having slept for a good 30 hrs and after finishing 91, Phil, Bonnie, Jen Ma, Raul, and Lita went with me to Honda-ya. *_* I always said I wanted to go there for my birthday, and it was super sweet of Phil and co. to invite me. x3;

I had my first legal drink order there: Calpis Soda Chu-Hai. Except... the waitress thought that it was only the 8th, and she was like o_O when she looked at my driver's license. It was pretty hilarious.

I got that and zaru udon, some really funky raw scallop (why do I have such a hard time remembering the word scallop?), and takoyaki! :) Man, I love Japan~

So anywho, it was interesting because I thought the chu-hai was wayyy stronger than I expected it to be, and it tasted way too alcohol-y for it to have been just a single shot of shochu (I think they actually used vodka, but I'm not sure...)

And I hurriedly sipped the last half...

Anyways, I get really sleepy when I drink o_o... That's my conclusion. That coupled with 30+ hrs hours of being awake just prior was... well, the effect was interesting.

xD

They paid for my dinner! <3

And yeah, I knocked out in the car, I think on Jen Ma's shoulders >.<;; and then it was freezing and we had to go back to Moore, and there was no way I would be able to drive home...

So... I stayed there, and Glen came in and started talking to Raul, but the next minute, I had fallen asleep on three chairs, which I think really surprised Glen and Raul, considering I fell asleep in front of them... D:

The next day, I felt kind of horrible, and wasted it reading manga.

I had said I'd go find Jennifer after I got back from dinner, but that didn't work out well... so... yeah, she came to me on Saturday with JYJ's In Heaven Special Edition Album! Yatta + this nice hairpiece to go with my yukata! Except she lost the card...

I was tempted to buy the album myself, but I was busy and didn't get around to it. ~_~;

I really don't think it's that hard to pick out a present that I like... >.> YesAsia is filled with them lol...

So on that note of being busy, I've been uber stressing, and I haven't gotten back to a lot of people about important things... Ugh. The more important the thing is, the harder I find it is to respond to e-mails/phone calls, especially when I'm busy. I'm just kind of like... I have to get x done first, then move forward, but a lot of times, this backfires on me. I kind of feel like that's what's been happening all of term...

Anyways, my parents took me to New Capital for dinner, and it was ironic, because they wanted to buy cake, but when we went up to the counter, we realized the cakes we saw were just those towel "cakes"... hahahaha...

Then I went back, cleaned up the 91 lab a little, and dropped my Zelda concert posters as I went to put them in my parents' car. Because I was too tired to drive, I left my car there.

Sunday and the rest of the week were devoted pretty much exclusively to apps and interviews... >.>; I came back to pick some stuff up, clean, and then drive home. It was the first time I drove home with my dad behind me in a different car lol.

So yes, interviews. I had 2 on Monday and 4 on Wednesday. I don't think they turned out that well, because I thought "electrical engineering fundamentals" would literally be that, but they covered a lot of feedback/transistor-level design things I have forgotten since 113 and 114 and haven't had time to review. >_<;; I tried really hard, was caught up on some easy, slightly more puzzle-type question... kind of fudged some other things related to projects I hadn't done in a long time or concepts I hadn't thought about while working on other projects... And having to derive things in the middle of the interview when you're under so much pressure is kind of hard. >_<;; I really wish I interviewed with companies in previous years just to feel more comfortable with them.

But yeah, feedback, transistor-level designs of this and that. D:

As for apps, well, I think I broke. :( My laptop crashed on me at 11:43, and because of how much I've loaded it up, I wasn't able to get back to the site until 11:55 to just barely submit my app at 11:58 when it was due at 11:59, and without enough time to make last minute changes to my statement of purpose. >_<;; It really sucked, considering how much I want to got there for grad school. At least I hope I actually submitted the final revision of my SoP and not some entirely different document.

My blurbs for why this school were kind of rushed...

I also had major issues with submitting UCLA, just like I did with USC, because they use the same system, and it goes by EST clock, so I wasn't sure if the application was due at midnight EST or PST, and I tried submitting earlier, but the cash system didn't work... and I guess it only didn't work on my laptop, because half an hour past 9, I got it to work... sort of. I paid one time, and tried going back to the app to click the final submit, but something happened, and the script prevented me from doing so, so I had to repay, and the second time it let me, but I'm pretty sure both of my payments were procesed. wtf man. :(

Anyways, that day, I had two apps due, and I woke up late accidentally. D: An then my dad just had to make an optometrist appointment at 3:30, which took 45 minutes. Luckily, I told them not to put dilating eye drops in my eyes, because I would be staring at a computer intently for a good 5 hrs after the appointment.

The point was to get in a new pair of glasses before the New Year.

So yeah, on Friday, I went to pick out glasses... Frankly, all of them were a bit so-so, but I ended up going with a pair of Guess glasses after probably an hour and a half there... -_-;; + $60 for anti-reflective coating, which I'm hoping will make my photos turn out less horrible. Now, I have to take off my glasses, so that my eyes actually show up :( Man, it ruined my photo with Kouga Yun. :(

So yeah, I drove to Tech, started grading... yadda yadda. One of my recs hasn't been submitted, and I'm freaking out...

I went out to eat with Murtaza. He's a really great guy. x3 We went to Cheesecake Factory, and talked about a lot of stuff. I paid for dinner, since he treated me last time, but he paid for this delicious slice of cookie dough cheesecake. *_* SO GOOD. Not too sweet, but loved the flavor <3

And yeah, I've been going crazy about grading, because people write crappy code, and when they run it, it supposedly works, because Xilinx is better at fixing their errors, but when I run it in Aldec, it dies, and I have to figure out why. :( So I wasted probably 15-18 hrs trying to get everyone's code to run...

Michael bought me some Mountain Dew to keep me alive, but between yesterday 8PM and noon today, I got nothing done... That's why I had to leave Moore and grade at Teaspots.

Wahh...

Anyways, I can't really say break has started yet, because I've still got some lab stuff to do until my meeting with my mentor on Wednesday. I wonder if she realizes break started. I think no one in my lab realized that SURF ended at the end of August, and just thought that I was obligated to work throughout all of September..

And that's the reason why I haven't really had a legitimate break since Spring, although Spring was short.

Ok, sure I went to Arizona and had AX, but those "vacations" were for a mere couple of days...

And Spring Break was short...

And last winter break was the shittiest ever. :(

Oh man, which goes back to: I really haven't had a nice break since Japan.

And who knows when this break really will start? I was going to go skiing/to Canada/to Vegas with my cousin, but I took a while to reply to his e-mail because I was busy, and he hasn't gotten back to me since then...

So I guess I can work on my website, and that's it? So anti-climactic for senior year.

It's also just totally unfair how much work is always piled on me at the end of term when I TA... I don't think any other TA would stand for this...

I turned in my USC app late, apparently by a couple of seconds, because 1) I didn't know they were going off of EST, 2) their PDF cut off part of my response, despite it being under the character count, and 3) they had an additional submit button after processing my payment at 11:59:30 PM something EST. /ragequit

I was supposed to be getting a lot of my PCB done today, but instead... I just had a hilarious time talking to Max, Raul, and Lita about life. I didn't know getting "friend zoned" was just a guy thing, because I feel like it's happened to me way too many times. :( Am I not girly enough?! D: ... Or...

Glen and I were talking about conventions and the likes, and somehow, the topic of booth babes came up. It was super wtf-ish. xD;

Anywhos, I was supposed to go home around 3:30, but that got pushed to 4:30, because Kaushik guilted me into attending something during Moore social hour, although I left midway through it. >.<;; Except there was a lot of traffic (zomg Pasadena bottleneck), so going home, changing, and coming back took until 5:40, after which, I ran to my TA meeting extremely late... I talked to Glen for <5 minutes, before making a mad dash to Dabney for dress dinner. AHH~

It started off pretty gosh darn awkward. Doris and co. were standing right by the door with Jomya, Raymond, Yuehan, and people... so yeah, I proceeded to ask Raymond where Michael was, and then I went and joined him, mostly because I didn't want to be around the crowd at the door. So anyways, I wound up talking to Prof. Politzer and his wife.

Anywho, that was all settled. We had steak, but my piece was like well-well-well done, so cutting it/chewing it was a huge challenge. D:

Did you know that cheap wine can taste pretty good? :o Man, 5 days.

So that all ended, and then Dabney had its usual guests must introduce themselves kind of deal. Ka and Doris had already left. I found this strange, because Alex was waiting on people, and Yuehan was sitting at an entirely different table. Anyways, because I was so short, they skipped over me during intros, so I referenced the fact that apparently I'm very short in my intro. >.>; (not the first time I've done that at Dabney), sooo I was encouraged to be "taller" i.e. stand on the chair. xD

That being said, I had a really long conversation, catching up with Lily and Alan and Yuehan, and co. :O Yuehan was surprised that I was invited -__-, and then he asked since when I actually knew Michael. -__-; And I found out Alan was Dabney House president o_O... Talk about being out of the loop.

Anywho, then I went over to his apartment for tea, because I was falling asleep... and on the way, we bumped into Alex Pai, who I guess thought that formal dinners were like candle light dates, since we were dressed up (on that note, yayy! I finally got to wear the dress I bought over the summer to a dress dinner :D, but not to "impress" the guy I originally had bought it to impress, because he's poopy, and whatever... although man >.>; I don't fit as well in it now as I did before ;_;...

So yeah, we stayed and talked until past 12, and then I got 2 of my 3 boards working-ish (slightly buggy, but I know why), and yeah... slept.

Raul and I went to Teaspots yesterday, and then bought Glen a cake because it was his birthday. :D Guessing --> win!

We sent him an e-mail about wanting to show him something "cool," but we didn't think he would come...

A few hours later, he was actually here and Raul just managed to catch him. :O

So then we had cake (which was actually pretty good, imo; not too sweet), and talked for a few more hours... and yeah... I wanted to work, but I fell asleep.

So here I am, freaking out about the rest of the term and avoiding a phone call, because I've been bleeeeh for so long. ._.;

Birthday party tonight~

I have a USC app due in 8 hours and not enough of it done. :x

My PCB is here, and same with my 2nd 3DS. D:

But I'm so busy! AHHH. Q_Q

I have two phone interviews on the week of the 12th. In addition to apps. :x But I'm hoping that my current SoP is not too bad to warrant another rewrite, so if that's the case, then life will be a lot easier.

Nevertheless, senior thesis next week, 91 demo, next week, and Law33 final... D:

Birthday party on Sunday, and maybe formal dinner... AHHH.

I liked that song a lot, but maybe it was a bad time to recall.

Anyways, after trying desperately to come up with the single most important essay of my life... and demoing my 91 project, I went with Chris to see L arc en ciel's 20th anniversary concert showing. Man, it made me feel super nostalgic to think that I was at Ajinomoto Stadium last year! It's quite overwhelming~ That and the rain = perfect.

I should listen to them more. Aside from random spurts of interest in Hyde throughout the years, I haven't listened to many of their songs, except for Ready Steady Go and the couple of songs they did for Kenshin, which, back in the day (junior high), I used to have on repeat on Winamp. Wow.

But yeah~

Tetsu is hilarious with his bananas. xDD

Back to writing apps due Thursday... >.<;;

Not.

I spent Thursday/Friday in lab and all of Saturday/Sunday working on my 91 PCB. On the up side, I'm much faster at PCBing now that I've done it 3 times... Hopefully there aren't any mistakes.

I had to drive to lab for OH yesterday, and Glen got mad at me, so I was avoiding him by not coming to Moore... Then he went 'boo' as he turned around the corner, and I didn't even really pay attention to the 'boo,' because tears just started welling up in my eyes.

WTF. >_<;;

I need to control these overactive tear ducts of mine, because wow... I seem like such a sucker. :(

Making things more awkward...

>.>; So when they were having their meeting, I went and grabbed the scope, and avoided all eye contact. ~_~;;

Anyways. Things are slowly wrapping up. I've got to write a Statement of Purpose by Thursday... Sighhh... -_-

I stayed too long to help people even though I don't have OH today.

Or something.

I had one of my ever recurring breakdown moments yesterday, but it was for the best, I guess.

I spent the day cycling through the process of: soldering + capturing S-parameter data + running Matlab. There's got to be some more efficient way to do things, but I'm finally getting semi-decent results, what with my S11's and S22's finally dropping below 0.2... It's just hard because either the model Analog gave us doesn't fit right with the actual chip or somehow, there's waaaay too much parasitic capacitance, but doing rough calculations, I can't see there being that much parasitic capacitance to affect my matching networks. :<

So yes, I bumped into a prof on a holiday, because apparently some delegation from such and such country was here to visit. o_O

And of course, I saw some grad students working in lab...

Anyways, I was moody in the morning, but everything kind of cleared away when I looked outside the window. Gosh was yesterday a beautiful day~ I went so far as to snap a picture of the orange/green shaded maple outside of Moore. Man, would it be glorious to visit Kiyomizu Dera and Kyoto right now~ That and Tokyo with its shiny Christmas decorations~ -sigh-

So yes, I got back home, had my whole breakdown about why things aren't going the way I thought they would and struggling to find myself and where I see myself in 6 or 7 years... I just feel like, despite not originally thinking so, I've lived my life too much to satisfy other people, and that has made me kind of miserable. Rather than trying to meet others' expectations, I should try to meet my own.

So yes, I've been thinking about grad school. It's one of those annoying things where I've finally nailed down (a somewhat industry-leaning) criteria for the perfect kind of research, but I haven't quite found research that matched all the criteria, granted, things may change. You know, finding research is kind of like finding a boyfriend. It's the same exact thing. You're going to be spending lots of time on the subject/person, so you'd want something/someone compatible. Plus, you're doing a lot in terms of investing time for future results...

So yeah, maybe the fact that I'm still so up in the air about boyfriends and the whatnot is directly reflective of my current position about grad schools and research.

Anyways, today is a new day. I've got to finish PCBing my 91 project and crossing my fingers to it actually working.

Then I can start worrying about statement of purposes. Part of me believes that somehow in my sleep I might figure out what I want, but ehh... that's all just me dreaming.

Oh, and apparently my parents moved all of my stuff into my grandma's old room. Part of me doesn't want it, because I feel like it's not my place, but at the same time, it's been 4 years since I've last had an actual room to myself, and even before, I was way too conservative, hardly ever putting up posters and the likes because I thought my parents would object. I have the urge to spend winter break turning my room into a fandom haven like I had originally meant for it. Then again, I don't plan on staying around if I can avoid it, so maybe this will be like a demo run of what a room in a future home might look like.

And suddenly, my mood brightens up. lol...

Anyways, some other random commentary:

KPOP Masters in Vegas! And I'm missing out due to work. :( Well, not that I regret it nearly as much as missing JYJ or SMTown... Jaejae = my bias. <3 I'm almost 21, and when I am, I'll be sure to hit up Vegas. Yep, I had kind of arranged more than a year ago to go with my friends/cousin, but eh, things have changed. I don't really think my friends are that interested in going with me, so maybe I'll just go with my cousin, assuming he can find time. If not that, I might hit up Vancouver. Of course, I just keep defaulting to Canada, but we'll see...

What else? I want to go to a bar on my birthday, just so I can flaunt my still under-21 driver's license and be like "take a closer look dude, I'm legal!" xD... Stuff like that, despite not really enjoying alcohol (especially hard alcohol is major ick :x), just makes me feel like I've finally leveled up to a point where society actually cares. :(

So yeah, regardless of how many sets I have to grade or apps I have to write, I plan on going out on my birthday, as for with who, that becomes another matter entirely...

Oh and despite now owning the Zelda 3DS, I haven't even opened the package... Should I really keep it? I don't want to open it, play it for a little bit, and then toss it aside. I don't quite have the time to spend hours on Pokemon or this or that like when I did as a kid...

And on the note about guys and boyfriends in general, I feel like I have too much of a tendency to read into little invites to do this or that; maybe because usually people don't reach out to me unless it's like a casual on-a-whim (I can totally feel it) kind of thing... But eh, it's not a bad thing, necessarily, granted, I think I start liking guys too quickly when that does actually happen.

So yeah, if you can't guess >.>;...

Anyways, back to work. I think this post is a decent balance between emoting and random ok happy peppy... Just need to inject more fandom into it all...

dotdotdot

Life is like a boat.

Aside from making measurements in the same room as some guy, I've spent this day alone. I'm missing out on Thanksgiving dinners at home and at school, and McDonald's is closed, so instead, I'm eating chicken tenders from Carl's Junior up in 3rd floor of Moore. I bought the special 3DS Ocarina of Time bundle from Best Buy, but who knows if it'll actually ship, what with the whole credit card expiring fiasco... And I don't plan to go Black Friday shopping for the first time since sophomore year (or maybe freshman year?!) of high school. This year, I don't feel particularly thankful. You know, part of my reason for coming home for Thanksgiving before was because my grandma's birthday was always during that holiday, but she's not going to be there, so what's the point? Nothing's really gone how I wanted... and I feel more at a loss than ever before. Tell me, what can I do to be happier? What can my future afford me? I feel like I've been wallowing in self-pity for too long, and I can't move forward.

I haven't ever felt more helpless.

Bye-bye Facebook notes. It's been a long, somewhat tumultuous ride, but it was for the best. You know, over the summer, I was, to some extent, head over heels about a guy, but knowing that everything was one-sided, I finally placed everything aside, and thanks in part to being kept super busy and having him ignore me to a certain extent, I've gotten over it all. Now that... I'm just in a somewhat sluggish state of Ican'tdoanythingproductive, I've been thinking about stuff like that again. :(

I'm getting tired of always placing work first. It's not like it makes me feel all that great to grow distant from people. >.>; I want to be more fandom-peppy happy... And I feel like I haven't been very happy with myself in over a year, and dwelling on this fact makes me feel worse.

I think it kind of fully hit me when I started dreaming like a fangirl again. Man, Yoshiki is super legit~ xDD;;

But yeah, all that aside, wondering about people... wondering if things could maybe pan into something...

-sigh-

I reserve going to things like concerts and such or dreaming about seeing the Northern Lights for people that I think legitimately care about me, if only as friends.

-sighsomemore-

And on a really random note relating to guys in general, man... why was Jaejae drafted? >_<;; He's not that old!

And I saw a "cute" guy at Red Door today... Hmmm >.>;

I had this crazy bleeping dream about Yoshiki <3! And somehow Ayu was involved :o and right before there was going to be some huge non-X-related after party, I just had to wake up because it was too good to be true and freak out about not having started on my E10 presentation. Poop. :(

I really want to meet Yoshiki ;_;

Sometimes, I wish I was pretty enough so that people who only care about looks would at least see me as someone worth approaching (as a friend or something, sine it's better than being ignored...).

I had a long conversation with Glen about religion and politics and such before I fell asleep... And err... yeah... Thank godness it was some funky setting with the VNA I guess I missed... >.>;

Gonna get back to work.

I ate dinner with the grad students lolz... And err... yeah...

Fwop. ._o

I got an A- on my last E10 presentation. I don't think getting an A would've helped my grade any, and I'm pretty sure getting anything less than that would've dropped it down. Oh well. And here I thought I was on a role in terms of improving. :< Actually, frankly, I was less stage-fright this time around, so I guess it was more of a content issue (which it was) and knowing the nuances on Powerpoints and the use of laser pointers that got me. Ah well... In terms of self-improvement, this has been a good class.

I guess that means my posts won't be transferred over to Facebook anymore. I feel a little bit of relief, maybe? Haha.

These days, I'm super conflicted, and as a result, my productivity has gone waaaay down. >_<; I can't decide what I want to do with my life; and for the first time, I'm just... well... confused and nothing else. D:

All this grad school app business drives you up the wall. >_<

So yes, life.

Part of me really wish I had planned this term differently. None of this funky sleeping in Moore business to still not be productive enough. =\

I want a chance to work at a big company~

As for yesterday, well, I actually went home. o_o And Alex, Brian and I went to Din Tai Fung. The stuff's super expensive and err... not really worth the hype at all. =\ And sighhh... the 炒年糕 was... only okay.

I'm rather disappointed.

Anyways, something's not quite right with me, I think. I just really haven't been able to get back up on my feet since everything that happened after I got back from Japan. Maybe it's not such a bad idea to move there. :(

Sometime last week, I was told by my friend that I looked like Sohee from Wonder Girls. o_O And you know, I can see the tiny bit of resemblance. :o

Okay~ so here's my schedule:

Get 91 PCB designed by next Sunday, so I can possibly get it by next Thursday. Spend the next week/break getting my other PCB fully functional...

I've got a Law33 set due tomorrow that I don't really want to do. :( Apparently, I'll be needing roughly 60% in the class to pass...

That coupled with grading and the first wave of apps being due soon, I've got quite a bit of miscellaneous stuff things to do on my plate.

I got some interesting replies from the few interviews I did have. I think they liked me, but err... people were looking to hire January people/software people, but they'd pass my resume along to the right people? Or something like that. Had I known things were so poorly planned, I might as well have saved myself the stress and applied later. >_o

So, fandom-wise:

I preordered the Skyward Sword bundle from Best Buy after panicking for a little while about it no longer being available for online preordering anywhere. My last minute decision turned out to work in my favor, because, despite having to pay tax, I go my game day of, and I also go a $10 giftcard. Yatta!

Apparently, Best Buy is selling a special edition Zelda 3DS bundle that I'm tempted to line up for on Black Friday. :o

Mn, I really wish I had more time to play. :( Lots of 25th Annniversary reference lolz in the game~

Sigh. Why is it raining? :( I don't realize that seasons are changing until I get out of Moore.

Also, I'm really enjoying this new season of Last Exile. It so far seems less dark and brooding, and I guess I wish there were more male leads, but yeah~ DIO <3 Grand Race *_* Vanships~

Anywho~ I have a lot of Statement of Purpose revising to do, and the fact that I still haven't really nailed down what I want to do in the future is making it very difficult... I'm tempted to say that I'm more in the startup bandwagon than I've ever been before, but I've always sort of had like a pinky toe in that direction. >.>; Unfortunately, my hacked together statement of purpose was better than the NSF essays I used to make it. Oh well... :(

Wednesday: My E10 intro went well. I think the prof likes to see improvement. I'm happy I'm almost done with all this presentation business, because I don't know why I get so nervous when I deal with them. :(

Oh, and I got mistaken for another Chinese student by my Ec109 prof, and since he thought I was the one that hadn't already presented yet, he asked me to go again, and I was like D: ... Luckily, that got worked out.

I'm kind of worried about recommendations and such. ._o I waited for half an hour to speak to one person, but I think that turned out well... In the process, I totally forgot about my OH for half an hour. lol...

Oh yeah, I forgot. I think on Tuesday, I ate pho with Alex, and err... Some things he said kind of irked me. >.>;

I had a really long tea time with Michael and Travis Wednesday. This entry should have been made right after that, but I think I was too tired or something, and came out of it with nothing written. :( So yeah, I realize that the closer I get to people, assuming I like them, the more I'm willing to ramble on and on bout my woes and problems and such, and err... I think that has the adverse effect of making them want to approach me less. lol... /too depressing to talk to. @_@;; But yeah, if you can't tell from that statement, I think hanging out with them is cool. :D Haha~ And I got invited to Dabney dress dinner and a 5-person birthday party (my own included) courtesy of Michael.

But before all that, I drove Helena to buy some wine (not for myself, of course...). She asked me for a $20, but then the lady tried carding me, so ehh... Oops? I guess you can't even lend people money to buy stuff like that... o_o... Oh well~ I've only got less than a month left.

Thursday was super interesting. I went to lab to work, worked a bit, then I had to buy food for a TBP meet and greet, except when I asked Sandeep to come with me, I ended up getting his whole crew to come along. We should've bought more smoked salmon (and here I was thinking I'd have it all for myself lolz...) Yeah, and then on a whim, we decided to go to the Americana/Galleria. I wish I'm able to have more of those "oh let's randomly decide to go to x" kind of moments with friends. They're super weird/random/interesting/fun. xD;

I found out that I like the Christmas flavors of mocha at Starbucks, and on that note, it's the first time I've had Starbucks since probably freshman year. o_o

So yeah, after that random excursion (couldn't stay for the Christmas tree lighting at the Americana), I went to the TBP meet and greet, and in some confusion about timing and shit, my friends went on ahead to celebrate Jennifer's birthday. :( I was kind of upset that they were too hungry to wait until 7, so I was feeling too down to deal with it all.

Seriously, I think the best birthday "gift" I got was when Stephany drew a birthday thingy for me frosh year and I believe Peter left cake on my desk. :) Sophomore year, my friends collected less than a handful of people to sign my card, and, granted I was super late working on whatever I was working on, only 3 or 4 people even bothered to say happy birthday. :( Well, the Audrey Hepburn book was nice, and something I'd use as a drwing reference, but yeah... And of course, last year, basically everyone forgot about my birthday. Helena and Alta dropped by to give me Beard Papa's because Helena had read my LJ entry about it. :(

So yeah, I wanted to be there for Tony and Jennifer's birthdays, but ehh, they always went ahead without me. And it seems like far more planning goes into everyone else's birthdays, so maybe I'll be like w/e. I'll go to some nice, upscale bar with whoever I see that day.

The rest of Thursda consisted of me feeling sleepy and not being really useful to the 119 people. /sad. I did however discover that I knew one of the people taking the class in various other contexts: i.e. he came to my high school one time to be a robotics mentor, and he worked for the same people at JPL that I had worked for...

Friday... I don't actually know how Friday slipped away from under me. o_O I was taking a quiz... then I fell asleep... I went to Best Buy with Murtaza to preorder Zelda, and err... he ended up paying for my first time to Islands. I owe him one~ But I had a lot of fun :D And Shirley Temple~ Don't know why it's been the "it" drink for it lately... probably because it's the closest thing I can get to a cocktail right now. :(

Saturday consisted of working on 91 a lot (my basic design's pretty much done...), and yeah, feeling sleepy.

I woke up, went to Best Buy, and got my game today. I/my brother have been playing it, but err.. guess I need to get back to work.

BTW, being able to use the accelerometer for its intended purpose is pretty awesome. *_*

Ah, last but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOSHIKI <3! Hope you'll be rocking LA sometime early next year. :)

So I spent the weekend basically camped out on a couch in 010. I'm sure the 51 kids thought I was really weird. -__-;;

I turned in my NSF app 3 minutes before the deadline, but ehh, let's just say I really regret not working on it earlier. /hopeless

But that's okay. I started reading a new manga called Sorairo Ageha~ It's like Tenipuri but shoujo-ified with romance and all that good stuff.

The new episode of Last Exile was schw33t ~ I'm still uper hyped up over the fact that Dio's aliiiiveeee~~

Anywho, this post was supposed to end happily, had I actually clicked the post button yesterday...

But... After having a somewhat depressing conversation about life and future goals and such with Glen and Alex, I was hungry, so Alex and I went to this pho place... Then I went to his apartment to pick up the clipboard I had left there on accident, and err... >.>; ended up crashing on their couch (which I guess displaced Brian because that's his bed...)

Anyways, I woke up right around 8, realizing that even though Alex said it'd be OK to park there, I forgot to check for any time limit. D: So I looked out the window and saw the 2 hour parking from 8-5 or whatever it was, and err... I was like... crappp, I have to get out there and move my car.

But apparently it was too late. I had no idea Pasadena had any kind of no overnight parking anywhere kind of code even if there are no signs on the street, and now I've managed to lose $46 >.>; Apparently, temporary overnight parking permits cost a measly $3. What's even more annoying is that credit card transactions cost $3 extra.

And their system is so lousy that I won't even be able to get the payment off of my back until Thursday at the very earliest. :(

This sucks~

I forgot to take my TA key out of the door :(; I went home only to find out that my parents were replacing the carpet for wooden floors and there would be nowhere for me to work without getting overwhelmed by the sound of drilling and hammering.

Today, I went around Moore looking for an empty cup to drink one of my 3 huge bottles of Calpis, only to turn up empty handed.

Then Intel came to the rescue! As I remembered that I left one of the swaggie Intel cups I got from the career fair in one of my Moore lairs just for such an occasion.

Tomorrow... I'll be sad. :(

Monday, I had Teaspots with Alex and Brian.
Tuesday, I had Japanese food at home.
Wednesday, after I had this crazy 2 hours conversation with Glen and Raul about pranks and this and that, I went to Teaspots yet again... with Raul. Then I think I went to lab and worked on my PCB, which err... I thought I fixed my matching network completely, but it was apparently only partially, and I haven't 100% pinpointed the problem. :( Then I fell asleep in lab, but it got cold, so I went to the 91 lab... Oh and class was apparently cancelled when I didn't realize it was. D:
Woke up the next day, went home, got nothing done, went home, and came back for machine shop safety training. I think something must've happened during it that has made the left side of my face feel shitty. :< I'm only tearing up in my left eye, and my nose has been running all day. >.>; Then yeah... I went to Green Street cafe with Michael, Manuel, and Alex (Michael just happened to stop by...), had gratuitous amounts of Shirley Temple, came to OH 30 minutes late, but stayed an extra hour helping people finish up homeworks from past weeks. :x

Then... last night, I decided I'd fall asleep in 010 for the first time since last year. Why didnt I do this earlier?! It's way more comfortable than 3 chairs!

So today, I had a meeting about thesis, and I guess it went well?

I sent an e-mail with this heading: Give Christ x pts ... EOM (should have been -t)
And I got a reply: I thought you were sending me something religious. ;-)

oh dear. ahaha ._.;

--

Just got back from formal dinner. Sometimes, all this wine tasting and gourmet food blah blahs can make people sound a bit snobbish... -_-

Just saying.

Tick. Tick. Tick...

Today started off kinda awesome... New chapters of Bleach and Naruto are as interesting as ever, what with Byakuya being so SHINY. MWAHAHA. *_*

Okay, wtf... FB is going to keep me from importing LJ entries to it starting mid November. >.>;

So the day started out wonderfully. *_* It got kind of cold in 3rd floor, so I went to sleep in the 91 lab. I worked for a really long time on my projector presentation, and the prof liked it enough to give me an A. :o Even though I stumbled around quite a bit... I guess presenting on something he can relate to and that is easy to understand is the way to go. :<

But in the process, I kind of dented my Syaoran cel. :( Or it might've already been like that...

Anywho, I also got another interview lined up, but I kind of need to reply saying that this week doesn't work that well for me. :(

Then the day kind of started being less pleasant in the sense that... I lost my packet of capacitors. /annoyed.

Anyways, I'm here at OH, but no one else is here because there isn't a set due this week.

I'll probably go home in a bit...

I finally got around to watching Fam the Silver Wing.

YAAYYY Dio is backk~~~ and alive!!As are Tatiana and Alis..

Now for Clause and Lavie to make a cameo...

<3 Last Exile.

I went to the Lang Lang concert with Michael yesterday. I had gotten an extra ticket intending to take my brother or a friend along (one of two people playing in chamber music that I met freshman year comes to mind, but ehh, I realized it had been a while since I talked to either of them...), so yeah, since he had invited me to tea and such, I thought he might be willing to accompany me and he did.

Frankly, I like listening to shorter nocturnes or etudes of preludes, etc. more than long sonatas, and more so than any other composers, I really appreciate pieces by Liszt and Chopin, so I really liked the ending + 2 rounds of encores. :D Actually, I think Bach suites are more suited for smaller audiences (I like Bach very much too)... And it would've been very interesting to watch Lang Lang play Rachmaninoff. xD I can't remember the title of the piece Lang Lang played for his second encore (edit: La Campanella), but my goodness, it's one of those songs that I'm sure I've had on my iPod playlist on repeat, even though I haven't listened to my iPod in months...

But yeah, I'm totally in agreement with him that Liszt pieces are wootnessss~~

As a random side note, man, Glenn Gould was amazing.

So yes, I had my Microsoft interview today. o_o I basically told my interviewer up front that I didn't have any formal training with algorithms, so, after basically reiterating that I was looking for a hardware position and fangirling about the Arc Mouse and MS Surface (which I accidentally called Table... :x), the interviewer decided to give me a PM question. Turns out stuff like that is actually very fun. o_o I was stuck on it for a long time, because I didn't really understand his question, but ehh, it's the first time I had so much fun answering what I would consider a less than technical kind of question. As I said, I'm really into working kind of in between the development and design side of things.

Well, the end result was that I kind of gave off the impression I was more into hardware. >.>; But it was fun! And somehow the interview dragged on to be almost an hour long. D:

But yeah, if only all interviews could be this fun...

Just to say that I love this lightning/thunder/massive pouring of water. SOOO...EXCITING!!!

I just can't wear my usual shoes...

Driving to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in this rain...

I was supposed to go to Las Vegas around Christmas time, either with friends or with my cousin. I wonder if any of that will actually pan out. People are busy, these days.

If not, should I make a trip up to Vancouver? Or how about just San Francisco? Frankly speaking, I'd very much like to go and visit Tokyo during Christmas/New Years. >_< But that only would seem worthwhile if I had a very special friend come with me, so alas, maybe that trip will be saved for another year.

Sigh. I hope I don't spend all of break grading or working on this or that. :(

Actually, I wouldn't mind going somewhere with amazing hot chocolate *_*~

Why is life so dullllll?! >.>;

WAIII~~~

lol. I was having a conversation with Glen, and strangely enough, he knows a few of the bigger Asian idol groups (well, I knew that already), but he kept on saying AKB47 instead of AKB48, apparently because it sounds a lot like AK47... lmao.

Yesterday, I was kind of dead. Sleeping on 3 chairs isn't that great. You wake up feeling extremely tired... but I've gotten used to it a bit. So I went home, slept on the floor for a couple of hours, and then came back.

I stayed at OH an additional 3.5 hrs past time, and some guy had the nerve to bitch at me. I'm plenty fine with leaving at 11, and letting you guys take the hit for shit. None of the TAs my year would be caught more than an hour past their OH... >.>;

Anywho, that got me kind of upset.

Afterwards, I bought a lot of stuff for 91 from Samson, and err... I spent the morning/early afternoon making a lot of progress on it. *_*

Then I listened to a candidacy talk, went and chatted in Moore, had a TA meeting with Glen (and found out that I'm going to be taking on a lot of extra work at the end of the term, because Noddy's leaving early. omg. I have apps due right around then. >_<;;), had a meeting about coil parameters with Manuel, talked to Glen about jobs and such, and then... went to the Rath with Jennifer, Helena, and Tony.

I guess I was kind of depressed about it all, because I doubt they would've invited me if Jennifer hadn't seen me walking to the Caltech Y, and I'm sure they've been having weekly Ath "parties" with Doris and co., so I kind of feel like a leftover, if you will.

Truth be told, despite being horribly busy and totally out of the loop with matters concerning people in Avery, I've just been kind of lonely to the point of having to desperately seek out friends to "hang out" or eat dinner/lunch, etc. I guess you could call that diversifying and getting to know (other) people better...

Somehow, I'm just kind of feeling dejected about stuff. >_< I seem to be getting the crappy end of everything... a lot of times, I seem to just let people step on me. Ugh. My personality really does not suite the kind of person I wish I could be/my goals... Gotta work on that.

I forgot to mention I went to McDonalds with Yuehan last week. It's been a long time since I talked to him, so it was nice. We passed by a bee hive too lol...

Editness: Went with Alex to Michael and Travis' place to have "dessert potluck." Except... we kind of freeloaded. :x But it was fun (despite my being extremely sleepy).

It's nice to have conversations about life instead of always work... It's nice to put all your homeworks and lab things aside to just talk.

Why does wine/alcohol in general make some people tired?