fire is bad, ummkay

i was trying to blog at work, but it turned out to be this really long entry and it's still not finished yet. so instead, you get the following:

1. so friday night i was down in long beach because deidra and her metro pals were going to the queen mary for some haunted ghost thing. i'm not really into that stuff, nor halloween for that matter, but since i'm the loving and supportive boyfriend, i went. first of all, i'm don't like to be scared. example: i watched, the ring, and i didn't sleep well for about two weeks. anyway, during dinner, everyone was telling stories about how they had these supernatural experiences and i all i could think of was, "hmm... am i the only one here that never had one? or maybe i'm just not that attentive. oh, it doesn't matter, i'm just glad i've never seen a fucking ghost."

at first, we thought we could get $5 off with a coupon from ralphs, meaning we would have to cross the picket line. but then i justified it by saying, it's not like we're going to get some groceries. but then robert called and said that we had to go get some marie callender's frozen meals in order to get the tickets. "fine," we said, as long as it's just that. a few moments later, robert called again to say that they don't have any more coupons left. we knew immediately that it was a ploy to get us to buy groceries. fucking kroger! in the end, we thought, "fuck them," and decided to just get tickets at the queen mary.

well that never happened. apparently, they re-routed the parking lot and all of us got lost. in the midst of trying to find where we were, a great fog came rolling in from the ocean, and it made driving around lost even more difficult. but luckily with my great driving skills and incredible sense of direction, we were able to find our way back to a large street. since everyone was lost, we decided to go to a bar by the beach instead. it turned out to be a pretty good night with some drinking, some dancing, and some interesting conversations. after dropping deidra and robert off at their apartment, i decided to brave the fog, and drove home. it wasn't too bad of a night.

2. on saturday, deidra and i helped robert and stacey move into their new apartment in fullerton. let's just stay that it was hot, the apartment was on the second floor (no lifts) and there were a lot of boxes. unfortunately, they didn't provide us with any cold, liquid refreshments, so we had to settle for our warm bottled water. we nearly puked cuz it was not the best weather to be moving things about, and going up and down the stairs with the sun in your face was a bitch.

on a good note, UCLA won it's 5 consecutive game and are 4-0 in the pac-10, tied for first place with washington st. and the marlins beat the much hated yankees in the world series last night, 2-0. they weren't my first choice to win it (wanted the cubs or sox), but any other team is better than the yankees.

3. there are three fires raging out of control in southern california. i can't smell the smoke and it's probably because my olfactory nerves are't very sensitive, but it must really suck to have your homes destroyed. not to mention that investigators are now saying that it's probably arson. what's wrong with people who want to start fires?

4. looking into grad school is very tedious work. it's exciting to look for what programs you want to get into. but it's a lot of work and it's kinda monotonous. i'm thinking later today, i'm going to go to, sam's club, chinese market, and do laundery with deidra. and if we're good, we can even make it to a movie. maybe.

addendum

i totally forgot about this on my previous post, but one of the things i did that first year was wasting a lot of time at the campus arcades. there were three arcades that i knew of at UCLA. the biggest one was at ackerman union, with the largest variety of games to choose from. there were some new games like killer instinct, street fighter, virtual fighter, bubbles, etc. and some old ones like 1948, pac man, macross, etc.

the second arcade was located up in north campus, but it was small and was reverted into a cafe shop the following year. it did, however, have a pool table there. i remember going there once and seeing jerry and trinh (his girlfriend) shooting pool. that's about it for this place.

the last one was up in sunset commons, the villager arcade, and where i spent most of my nights after dinner. the GAME: daytona USA. i remember carlin, jonathan, keith, jerry and i would play that until closing time. i loved that game. my favorite was the intermediate level, because that was the only one i was good at. i played and played and played (or should i say, practice, practice, practice), but never got first place against the computer. oh, there were many times when i got second place , but never first (and don't think i'm not all pissed off about that). my only solace is that the computer's a cheater, that's the only logical explanation.

there were other games as well, but none matching up to the excitement and level of "funness" that daytona USA provided night after night after night. once in a while, i would play fighting games like killer instinct, street fighter and mortal kombat, etc. but i was never any good at those types of games. whadda u gonna do?

oh, and jerry had a sega genesis, so we would play sonic the hedgehog and echo the dolphin a lot. (not much inventiveness in their game titles, eh.)

good times. good times.

year 1

it's been a long time, but let's pretend it never happened.

i've decided to write about my freshmen year of college. some would say that it was a bit disasterous (namely, my family). looking back, my grades that year were quite rubbish, but i had a lot of fun though. with the lack of parental supervision, i went a bit crazy. sleeping at 4am in the morning everyday (missing most 8am classes--what was i thinking?), did little or no studying at all, played doom (deathmatch) over in carlin's room and various other things that i don't remember. i didn't do drugs nor did i drink that year, however, i did something that was much worse. i became infatuated with some girl i met. oh boy, did that hurt. it was horrible. i couldn't get over her until the middle of my sophomore year. what a waste of precious college-hook-up time.

i lived in a triple room up in hedrick hall that year. first of all, even though hedrick had the best view out of all the dorms, it was a bitch to walk to and from campus (especially during the hot months). i didn't like one of my roommates very much, so i spent most of my time in carlin's room hanging out with him, jerry his roommate, trinh, jerry's girlfriend, and mark, who lived off-campus. save for mark, we would eat dinner at sunset cuz it provided the most variety of different foods and a more aesthetically-pleasing dinning room. most of the time, cecilia, charlotte, jonathan and keith would join us. rarer still, would be iwei and pamela coming to have dinner.

basically, my day in a nutshell: wake up at around 12ish, get washed up, go downstairs to the dining hall for lunch, depending on the day, go to an afternoon class, hang out on campus for several hours, head back up to carlin's room, hang out until dinner, have dinner, hang out more at carlin's room, play catch with mark in the sunset quad, go back up to dorm room, sleep.

this was the trend for the first two quarters at UCLA for me. studying wasn't a priority and naturally my GPA was crap. in the fall of 1994, these were the classes i took:

HIST 1A WESTERN CIVILIZATN, GRADE: B-
LING 1 INTR-STUDY-LANGUAGE, GRADE: D
BIOL 40 AIDS&SEXUAL TRANSMT, GRADE: B-

that linguistic class was such a bitch. i hated it with a passion, so maybe that's why i hardly went to it at all. anyway, i was hoping to do better in the bio 40 and hist 1a classes, but i didn't (lack of reading). the only thing of significance that i remember was some guy having a seizure in the middle of one of the bio 40 classes. it freaked everyone out, but at least we got to leave early.

winter quarter 1994 looked like this:

PSYCH 10 INTRODUCTORY PSYCH, GRADE: C
ASTR 3 ASTR-NATURE OF UNIV, GRADE: A-
COM STD 10 INTRO-COMMCTN STDS, GRADE: C
MATH 3A CALC LIFE SCI STDT, GRADE: B

the grades were somewhat better, but still pretty bad. i hated psych cuz the exams were multiple choice, and i'm extremely horrible at them. i did, however, write a paper for which i received an 'A', so that was cool. astronomy was quite entertaining. all i can remember from that class was that i always sat in the aisle seat of the very back row of chairs in MS (math science) 4000 watching people coming and leaving. communication studies was one of the more interesting classes i took. though i did pretty poorly in it, it was still a very good class. it was held in the largest lecture hall at UCLA, moore 100, but that class never had an empty seat. talk about fire hazard; people were camped out on the aisles, which really sucked during rainy days. as for math 3a... decided i wanted to take a math class. man that was stupid.

winter quarter 1994, these were my classes:

ENGCOMP 2 UNIVERSITY WRITING, GRADE: C
MATH 3B CALC LIFE SCI STDT, GRADE: C+
HUMANIT 1D GREAT BOOKS, GRADE: C+
E&S SCI 16 MJR EVNTS-HIST LIFE, GRADE: A-

yes, i failed my subject-a test back in high school, so i had to take remedial english at UCLA. that class sucked, and the instructor kept wanting us to right about our experiences as immigrants. i learned nothing in that class. i don't know why i kept taking calculus classes when i hate trying to figure out integrals and derivatives. it was also at 8am in the morning... it was a loss cause. humanities 1d was the best class that quarter. i read a book by the african author, Chinua Achebe, titled, things fall apart, which was by far one of the best books i read in college. earth and space science 16 was pretty interesting, but i hated it. it was the one class i took in which i had no idea what was happening. all i knew as that i was suppose to "sketch" drawings of the fossils we "examined" during lab hours. other than that, i was pretty lost in that class. (on a special note: the TA for E&S sci was tough and was either missing a finger or had an extra appendage sticking out of his thumb, i can't recall. he told me once to suck it up and get my shit together. cool guy.)

one cool thing i did was i actually hung out on my floor the last quarter; too little too late, though. there were actually some really cool people on my floor. it was funny that everyone knew me as charles' disappearing roommate. charles, the roommate i liked, was really cool. he was kinda like the big brother i never had. that last quarter, we went swimming, played for our floor softball team, and generally hung out together. no too shabby.

bad things i did that year that i can remember:

- as a prank on the roommate that i actually didn't hate and who's from taiwan, i had jonathan crank call our room posing as an INS agent. it was pretty funny.

- to the roommate i hated: i took a pair of my slippers, walked around the toilets in our floor's communal bathroom, and wiped the bottom of it on his pillow. (don't feel disgusted, he was a fucker)

- i asked out a friend, who everyone (especially mark) thought liked me, but in turn didn't. and i was treated to a 2 hour discussion (but more like lecture) on why she and i are friends and only friends in the hallway of her dorm room. thanks a lot, mark. good one, buddy! and i didn't even like her. *sigh*

- in a game of win, lose or draw, i came up with "rolling down the hills in shorts." a classic if you ask me. and also in a game of truth or dare, i had to go up to the front desk of one of the resident halls and ask for some preparation h (as a dare). yeah, humiliation and i go together like mark and cheap japanese porn.

- jerry, carlin's roommate, gave me a hair cut once. when he was finished, i decided i wanted to shave my sides and back. carlin, with his gilette mach 3, decided that i could do without some of my skin and proceeded to butcher my head. granted, i asked him to continue to do it. it was great fun though. i wished i had the guts to shave it all off.

- very late one night, while holding the door for jerry, who was lollygagging with his burrito, i said rather loudly, "dude, jerry, hurry the fuck up. do i look like i'm a black guy or something? holding the damn door for you." no sooner did i say that, when some big, black dude comes strolling around the corner. luckily he didn't do anything, or else i would have kicked his ass. (okay, i fib. sometimes i wonder about my mouth. it's always getting me into trouble.)

if i remember anything more, i'll post it. so there you go, my first year in college. not great, but not so horrible either. at least i didn't kill myself, like that kid in dykstra hall. crazy fucker hung himself in his room. that must have sucked. sometimes you wonder about people.