Read-Only Memories...
July 16, 2004
Decided to go for a Costco/Ranch 99 run down Sepulveda. Drove David, Kourosh, and Kuo and we went shopping. It was great and all, but I parked my car out in the sun. I haven't had any problems with the car since I went down to LA, so I assumed it was fixed when it was taken to the mechanic before I left for LA. After shopping at Costco, the car wouldn't start. So I did what I usually did: wait for it to cool down and try again. Luckily it started again. So we then went shopping at 99 Ranch and shopped there for a bit. Hurray for 20 cent grass jelly drinks! Starting up the car again, I was fortunate enough to barely get it going. Went back to Costco to get some cheap gasoline. That's where the problems began. The car was sitting in the gasoline station when it refused to start. Kuo, David, and Kourosh pushed the car out of the gasoline area as I steered it to a nice shady parking spot. This time it refused to start for a long while. I drank one of the grass jelly drinks in the mean time and just enjoyed the free time. Man, don't you hate it when you get to the end of the drink, and grass jelly gets stuck in the can, so you have to find a way to get it out? Anyways, the guys went to go walk around a bit as I watched the car. A few moments later, David comes back telling me about a Pep Boys down the street. Dave watched the car as I went to go check it out. While I was gone, Dave was able to get it started. Stupid car... I'm gonna have to get it checked out again sometime.
Back at the apartments, we decided to have our quarterly COOKOFF!! After shopping at Ranch 99 and finding out tofu was being sold two for one, TOFU was going to be our common ingredient for cooking. For the appetizer, Kuo, made fried some tofu. For the rice dishes, Kourosh concocted a new combination of tofu, vegetables, and other stuff I have no clue about (yet to be named). For the noodle dish, I made tofu spaghetti. We all ended up cooking for four. So if you do the math, we had a lot of leftovers. For dessert, we had sweetened tofu that was almond flavored. A lady that happened to be shopping at 99 Ranch recommended that to us. Quite sweet. All in all, a "full-filling" cookoff. Looking forward to another one before this summer ends, hopefully.
July 14, 2005
Today, I had a midterm in Psych 100A. I felt pretty good about it. Even had time to check my answers and doodle a bit. When I arrive at internship, I get informed that we've hired a new writer to write articles and such for us. And for the rest of the day, we had a fun time filming a little advertisement/tutorial for a website. It'll end up being this flash showing users how to use the website. Pretty neat.
That evening, a bunch of us went to Hooters to celebrate Will's 21's birthday. Had a good time. I'm guessing Will will remember the names Stephanie and Janice. Then hopped over to La Cabaņa, this nice little restaurant that's been around for a long time now. I told myself I wasn't going to get anything, cuz I was getting low on cash and I was still underage. But Heidi was the best and gave us all something to lighten up the atmosphere.
On my way back home today, I decided to take the route Jess suggested to me. It ended up being really fast! I like it! However, at one of the traffic lights, this dude about 50ish pulls up to the lane next to me and looks at me for a moment. I thought I pissed him off from driving or something, so I try not to look like I want to start anything. He then rolls down his window (mine is already rolled down cuz lack of AC). He comments to me "Very cute. You're very cute." I was thinking, "Oh crap, what did I do to piss him off? He sounds so sarcastic." So I asked him, "What do you mean? What did I do?" I then get a tug in a whole nother direction by his response, "You know, cute... as in attractive. You're very attractive." I wasn't expecting that at all and say, "Why thank you." The light then turns green and we drive off in different directions. I was quite disturbed the rest of my drive back.
July 13, 2005
At internship today, I've for the first time gotten a bigger picture of what's going on. Jess, the CEO of E-shop Enterprises, called for a staff meeting (surprisingly that included me). Just so you know, we're strongly associated in the Jewish niche. Jess recently bought a once popular Jewish portal: Virtual Jerusalem. As you can tell from the link, it's been stagnated for a while now and needs to be totally revamped. So I and a few other people will be doing that. We'll be doing an all out advertising campaign on it once the high holidays come around. It'll be really exciting to see how it turns out. E-Shop also does Instant Notification Alerts (INS) for businesses, web solutions, and advertising.
Oh yeah, I drove Jess home after work, and he showed me this quicker route back to UCLA which could possible cut my drive in HALF!
July 12, 2005
Larry and I reminisce our orientation experiences. We decided to go to the freshmen orientation's Carpe Noctem scavenger hunt. Larry missed out on Carpe Noctem his first year, and I wanted to re-live the whole experience all over again. I'm saddened by how much I've changed since my first year. My whole time in college, everything is pressing down on me to turn off that childhood lightswitch and grow up to an adult. Right now, it's one of my biggest worries. I'm so goddamn boring now! And I feel self-consciousness and all these insecurities bearing down on what I do. It was very apparent seeing those freshmen. I had to go force myself to turn on that inner-child switch over the course of the evening and make the most of it. That switch was harder to turn on than I thought. Anyways, there are ten orientations. Nine more possible ways to be nostalgic about it all.
July 11, 2005
Was chatting online while at internship when I decide to IM Hanh. Ends up we have very similar summer school schedules, very similar work hours, and very similar locations of our jobs. She's actually just a few minutes drive from me. So we met up, ate at McDee's catching up since first year, then went to Coffee Bean to study. It's nice seeing people you haven't seen in a while.
July 8, 2005
I got back from class and Westwood when I found Kenny Lei waiting outside the apartment. He was waiting for Kenny Lam to take him to the Jazz performance at La Brea. So instead I offered to take him. Kenny also offered to pay for my dinner. Old man on walker crossing street. Larry joined us after roller blading there. Taking a whole half hour to find parking. After the performance, go eat dinner at this chinese restaurant. Good food. Not completely free as Kenny had offered to me.
July 4, 2005
After all that at Jon's place, coming back to the apartment felt so much less eventful. Well actually, it kinda was. No one was around. And those who were around didn't want to do anything in particular. So around the evening, I decided to go to MS/Boelter and see if I can get a nice secluded view of the fireworks from the top of the roof. Well, with the booms and whistles coming from the apartments and the pretty fireworks kinda hiding behind the tree, it was satisfactory. But not ideal. After a short while, a group of Math grad students also came up to see the action. I overheard one of them casually saying, "Oh it would be nice to go on that roof over there (*pointing to Franz). It would get a nicer view of the fireworks." And indeed he seemed right. There weren't any trees or anything there. And it seemed a bit higher than MS/Boelter. So I decided to leave them there and head over to Franz. I assumed Franz would be closed, so I attempted to look for some back entrances that would be unintentionally left opened. After a couple doors, I got really lucky and ended up in a basement. I casually walked by some random people working there and tried to not call attention to myself. Then took the elevator to the highest floor that was available: third floor. Not very impressive, but I knew a bit down the corridor was the tower, and I took another elevator to the eighth floor. At the eighth floor I was looking around for some door that would lead to the roof. As I was passing by an eleveator, I saw the numbers rushing to this floor! I started to freak out that perhaps it was security that was coming to kick me out. I really wanted to find a way to the roof. So I turned a corner and hoped no one would see me. The elevators opened and I heard several footsteps wandering around. I turned another corner just in case. It was futile. I heard footsteps coming from both sides of me now. And then, one of them appeared towards me and looked at me oddly. Had no clue what the heck he was thinking until he said, "Hey! Aren't you that one dude? The dude that was on the other roof back in Boelter?" I didn't realize right away, but the grad students I saw earlier also decided to try out the Franz roof. And luckily one of them was able to find the stairway that leads to it. And my, oh my. This whole little adventure was worth it. Franz roof has such a nicer view of everything. I can see all around me so clearly without any obstructions. I can see the whole campus. If it were day time (and not so smoggy), I would probably be able to see downtown LA. Rather, all I saw was darkeness in that direction. Kind of pretty. There weren't even lit houses or lightposts. Even if I didn't see fireworks, going up there is so worth it.
July 3, 2005
What a blast! I spent the weekend at Jon's home in Yorba Linda. Sandy drove Jon and I there, and while she was around, we hung out by the clubhouse feeding ducks, playing ping pong, and eating snow cones. After Sandy had to leave to finish moving into her new apartment (Love Boat), Jon and I drove over to Larry's place to hang out for a bit. From there Larry showed us around Downtown Disney. Nice hotel. Secret Mickeys. Can't remove lego pieces, but sure as heck can add to it. After that, we went around Little Saigon. It's about time I went there. And for the rest of the evening, hung out at Larry's watching this Live 8 concert. In-n-Out and snacks compliments of his family. The next day, I got to do another "first". Went to Fry's for the first time. So fun! No wonder Jon's mom said something about "getting lost" in there. The process of the barbecue is always the same. Spend the longest amount of time figuring out how to get the fire started (no matter how many barbecues I've experienced in starting the fire, I'm always a newb) and staring in awe at the fire while having interesting conversation. The food was awesome. Tons of meat. Tons of DELICIOUS healthy stuff. Tons of dessert. Eating lasted for a few hours right there. Jon's godparents seemed to have had some memorable college experiences. It'd be nice to look back many many MANY years from now and say the same about my years hear. So far, so good. =)
July 1, 2005
Had discussion for summer school, and then headed to internship. Little did I know that they have a perk where work ends early fridays. Which means, by the time I got there, Shay was all like, "What the heck are you doing here now? We're about to go home for the day!" So from now on, I know that I don't need to go to internship Fridays.
June 29, 2005
Went to work around 10 this time around. I should probably go around 8:30ish or 9, but I figured they wouldn't mind. Like Yoni said, "We're pretty flexible." Some major obstacles that's getting in the way of making my job any easier is the fact that like a zillion different writers and designers contributed to the site. This means there's no uniformity in the design of different parts of sites. So I can't just do a simple "find and replace" for all of the pages. Allen being the computer genius suggested that even though I can't do everything, I can take chunks of the site and do a "find and replace" to add the template. I should thank him for the tip. The more I work with Dreamweaver, the more hooked I get with its functionality. I'm more of the notepad coder though and will try to stick by that. But when it comes to jobs on such a larges scale as this, I can't help but rely on Dreamweaver's power. I've only touched the tip of what it can do.
June 28, 2005
First day of Psychology. First thing I noticed was the guy-girl ratio. I like. Plus, since it's a stats class, it should somewhat be review for me. So I expect myself to study hard and do better than in my Statistics 110A class. I'm hoping my fourth year will bring me more happiness all round compared to this past year. Second day of work, started really slow with the actual job I have to do. Basically we are taking over this once popular Jerusalem site and improving it. My first project is to setup a unifying template for this massive site (www.virtualjerusalem.com). This is the original site. I know it doesn't look too pretty, which is part of why I'm here to help a bit. A lot of the new template is already made. I just need to change every single page to match it. Right now it's a really really slow process. I'm sure there's an easier way. On my way back, I decided to try out the freeway in LA for the very first time. The thing I hate most about LA driving is the fact that it forces me to drive like a total ass. However, it is kinda fun trying to squeeze into where you have to go. When I went to park the car at Kourosh's apartment, Walter saw me walking out of the garage inquiring about my parking and apartment situation. I'm hoping all of that works out in the grand end.
June 27, 2005
First day of work. What can I say? It's set in a nice little suite in a tall black building in La Brea. The elevator is really fast. My computer is really slow. It took my the whole day just to format and install what I need. And the second I went on the internet, I got bombarded with crap. So I spent the rest of that day clearing that crap out. The people I'll be working around seem pretty cool. Shay, the person who sits the corner closest to me does the artsy stuff. He also does remixes of music for fun. Want to hear more of his works. Allen is the computer guru who's pretty friendly also. Looking forward to learning stuff from him. Yoni so far is like my guide through this whole internship thing. I hope I don't disappoint them.
June 26, 2005
After getting that last minute wire/tie replacement, I got to drive the car for the first time down Highway 5. It's not as bad as I imagined it. I find my tolerance for getting tired behind the wheel is much better than I expected it to be. I guess that one incident was an extreme case, but I should always be cautious when driving. Family got to see the apartment; bleh, I don't care. I'm moving out of there soon anyway. After visiting my future apartment, it seems like it's going to be a whole lot of fun.
June 25, 2005
This past week has consisted of waking up to drop off my mom, then my sister, then going to my grandma's to hang out for lunch and maybe dinner. Monday, went bowling with Kourosh, Daniel, and Ken. Good ole times. Tuesday, chilled at Anna's place with Beth, Andrea, and Jay. Went to IHOP for a late snack. In terms of my teeth, I got a new accessory: rubber bands. And because my wire broke, I also got those replaced and a wire tie instead of an elastic one. Also had to get fillings, but I was fortunate to get these ones that match the color of my teeth rather than those yucky silver colored ones. I got to meet Cuddle, our family puppy, for the first time. She's pretty awesome. Who'd've thought dog parks can be so much fun! I also found out my Electrical Engineering 103 grade, and that pretty much brought me to new lows. I know what Electrical Engineering 115A will be in store for me too, but they still haven't submitted my final grade for that yet. I'm not looking forward to any of this.
June 11, 2005
Did some studying down in the strip of MS with Kourosh and Kenny. Went with Kourosh to meet up with Jeff and ate at the burrito stand/Gushi's. After that, I met up with Gerard and watched Verdi's Requiem. It's up there in my list of lifetime experiences to accomplish before I die. And to think I would be able to check off something from my lifetime's things to do list so soon! I'm quite content. In addition, I got to go watch and support a few people I know perform it (Randy Bautista, Tiffany Hsu, Ryan Lee)! I'm completely content with the performance. Even though finals are coming up, I'm just so happy to be able to run into this opportunity.
June 9, 2005
Man, I ended up only getting a good half hour's worth of sleep last night/this morning. And I even went to my 8AM too. So even though I was very unproductive last night, I was still able to get stuff done this morning. Even went to EE 115A TAOH for the whole two hours. He was quite helpful, even though he goes super fast at times. It's probably better this way so I can get little exposure for everything. Plus, he has two more office hours before the final. What I need to do now, is make up for the slack and start working my butt off for EE 103, which I've been really holding back in thus far. CS M151B... we'll see how much time I have for that.
Can't wait til Batman Begins comes out. Larry showed me a friggin thirteen minute preview of it. Wow... where did my day go?
June 7, 2005
Hurray to a new website. I still have not the clue as to what kind of content I should focus on yet. I guess I'll make this particular section about stuff that's directly going on in my life. The sort of thing I originally had my Xanga for, but evolved to something else.
Anyway, got back from Leroy's birthday dinner at Bucca di Beppo's, the best family style Italian restaurant if you want to explode from pasta goodness. Before that I actually got some pretty good studying done at EastWest Sandwiches (Boba World) while waiting for Will and Aimee to pick me up.
Yesterday, I bussed down to La Brea to interview for an internship at E-Shop. It definitely sounded like I got the internship, but after remembering what happened after a previous interview I had, I can't ever be 100% sure about these kind of things. Hopefully I get it. It'd be nice to get a feel for what's out there. It would definitely compliment my education if the stuff I do relates to what I learn in class. Yoni speaks of this CS guru I must meet and feed off his aura of CS knowledge.
