Returning from Break—Re-inspired as usual!

AH hah! Just got back from the most amazing break ever! So much fun being home, seeing friends, and sooo many close friends. Newell’s organized party was awesome (except I got gypped of my $10). It was a long time since I’ve been in a room with so many people that all knew each other. After college, high school seems like family, more hugs and cheers than ever since graduation!

With regards to the various parties afterwards—from nostalgic, to hilarious, to relaxing, to thanksgiving and worship—each fulfilled some need, and everywhere, I felt reconnected with those I’d been away from for so long. All my thanks to everyone at school, Fellowship, Capt. Kirk’s place, CCMC bros and sisses, and of course all other people that I’d call family.

And yeah… I didn’t get to see, engage in conversation with, share a reflecting moment with all the people I wanted to, but… I suppose that’s just life. Everyone seemed to be doing well, those depressed were happier, and those stressed with college apps—lol—my experience says it all turns out okay in the end, reject or acceptance—still… I wish I could somehow keep all those relationships strong, and alive, and moving…

I went through some of my hardest times in high school, yet the entire experience is one that I am always going to be thankful for. And I’m thankful that I was never alone through it all…

Speaking of high school, I managed to get a picture of Jeremy Lee OFF GUARD!!! Where he’s actually showing his gut wrenching face… yet, when I copied the defiling picture to my brother’s computer, its hard drive promptly crashed, and proceeded to decay further and further. By the end of the day, the entire computer was down, and a clean install of Windows XP needed… and YET—it STILL was unstable as I left, and the HDD and 40 GB mysteriously vanished from virtual existence. Moral: Don’t take a picture of evilness and expect it to be tame. I lost all the party
photos too!! !

As amazing as the week was, I don’t think I’ve ever been more happy to be back at college (that is… until I found by homework and remembered the midterm tomorrow)—it truly feels like home now, and I don’t think I’ve been as energized or excited for school since the first week! Time to finish strong!

P.S. Can someone explain this to me?

I’ve been seeing it in some girls’ rooms, and t-shirts, and I’ve been scared to visit them since…

Ok, that’s it! out to dominate! Watching “Better Luck Tomorrow” in Asian American Literature!

<APPEND>
OOOH–I FINALLY USED THE RICE COOKER! AND IT CAN ACTUALLY MAKE RAMEN!!!

Thank you sooooooo much cat!!! You saved my day which i nearly fasted entirely! The ricecooker smiles to you.

It’s good to be home. There’s always so much to be thankful for; sometimes I forget that. Like this break—kinda scary that tomorrow is already Friday!! Like the whole break has gone by; and then I remember that some people just started their break today (Northwestern, UChicago-ish) and then it’s like… oh—I can live with that .

And for me, this break came at just the right time—even with so much progress being made at UIUC, I was on the verge of total collapse. Insanity rules in those times, my recent entries show that—no time for reflection even. But FINALLY—in this Turkey Day lull I can finally look back and try to make sense of it all.

What’s there to make sense of?

There’s times when I feel like I’m afflicted by a lingering, unsatisfied need—almost like a depression; something that’s so deep down that I forget about it in my hectic life. But at moments, like now, where I can sit down, ignore the flashing IM boxes, (shh!!! im thinking!) and wonder what I’m still missing in life…

Where am I going?

Haha—I just read sleepyshih’s xanga, lol, and I just had a
minor epiphany! attitude change time! Even things that seem bad can be reasons for thanksgiving–So thanks be to ALLL!

Anyway, yeah, I had an awesome time visiting North on Tuesday along with about 40 other folks, and I realized how much I missed the place. Not just the many awesome teachers I’ve had and the friends that I still have there, but I missed everything from the bureaucracy of the school, evading the narcs during lunch trying to get to the lit center, detentions! (the teachers actually care, even if they don’t know it!), walking in to a random classroom and waving to the few people that I know (which I did often senior year), just poppin’ down next to a table, to free just wandering around all over the building at lunch… there were some good times at North, and some not-so-good times but all of it, I missed. After the HUGEness of college high school seems so small, and homely; lol—it’s like being in a constant embrace of warmth.

By the time I got there, it was almost the end of 4 ^th hour, and Rohit had already gotten kicked out twice trying to get inside (front and back entrances). Ridiculously stupid, we return, so happy to be back and all the outer perimeter security can says is “no, we have too many of you lately, go away”. It’s not like we’re disrupting classes, or bothering teachers! Of course, this had to be remedied; I thought of alternate entrances—and moi, being sly as ever decided to sneak in with the wall climbing kids. Mr. Pour gave some funny looks (‘do I know you…?’) which I did not return as I walked in, trying to be as high schoolish as I could. I was still sneaking as I got to the small café when out of nowhere, Jon ‘Einstein hair’ shih tackles me with “JOOOOOOOO!!!!!”. Lol—and began the insanity. The end-of-period bell rang, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people that I’ve missed at once.   In college, it’s a fairly rare joy to see a familiar face, but at Noth, the barrage was overwhelming, I could have talked to each person for hours, but… all I had was 6 minutes.

The teachers are definitely different to you when you’re not their student anymore. As Biggs said, “you guys leave as boys and become college men when you come back”—lol, as obvious as that may seem, speaking as a non-student is much more… personal? I always wondered what it’d be like to meet up with teachers outside of school, get to know them as individuals (they can’t always be so harsh!), get to know their stories…

I had a fun time, complaining with Mrs. Wilverding about the draconian narcs who feel they’re on a moral crusade to keep college kids out (oh, funny story—Rohit was talking with Mrs. W. when a narc, apparently on the hunt for college students ’that don’t belong there’ comes up to him, asking ‘are you a student?’ He says “not anymore.” And then the narc takes his arm, and pulls him away, saying ‘you have to leave NOW’—AS he’s talking to wilverding!). Then I talked about the retarded “red zone” of which Mrs. Elenbass had NO idea. (“I always thought it was some kid’s school project”.) The bureaucracy of the school is just too funny to not be amused. Lol—Mr. Farrell was pissed off at Motorola’s backing out of sponsoring National Science Bowl this year, and he STILL seemed sad about us not going to D.C. last year. “I still think it would have been nice if we went? Don’t you think it would have been nice? Too bad our school couldn’t work something out.” I did try to have him look on the bright side, tough work cheering up a disillusioned teacher.

 At this point, I decided it was better to get a bona fide visitor’s pass sticker, rather than pretending to be a student (as Mr. Farrell suggested I do). I asked Mrs. W, if I could get an “appointment” to talk with her, apparently that’s the only reason good enough for us to be there, and went to the front desk. And OMG, here’s the one thing that DIDN’T change: the absolute retardedness of the narcs. She tried to kick me out saying that there were too many visitor’s over the past week (“I don’t know why you guys would want to come back here…”), and when I told her I had an appointment, she said there was “no one in the science office”, and calls on the next person in line. Fifteen minutes and ten people later, she finally comes back to me and asks again why I’m there, and THEN looks up the school directory and calls the office. She spends another 5 minutes complaining to Wilverding about how the science office never follows procedure.

 I could go on, but that pretty much encompasses every major event…

OH, I GOT IN A YEARBOOK PHOTO, and I am “Xander Skyrien” in Naperville North’s Model United Nations!

[Shall append more later]

Non-superiority complex 

College is reaching a milestone: the first major break since the beginning 3 months ago, coming up in less than 24 hours! And its about time too; it’s been insane the past week, and I’ve lost virtually ALL my motivation for anything (including getting up for classes).

While shooting for the 4.0, I’ve learned that getting good grades is fairly easy–study, work and it’s do-able. But KEEPING them is a wholly different–there’re SO many ways to falter academically, simple mistake, not studying enough, sleeping through a midterm (mleh… that was stupid). But so far, I think I’ve been spared from failure…

Which has made me complacent–and really REALLY slack off lately. But whatever–where am I going with this? Oh yea–I can’t wait for break !

—–

There’s funky stuff on the Facebook; for those who don’t know, facebook is like… there’s no way to describe it; its a HUGE mm… database of college kids; you can add friends in your college, other colleges; see your connections with people, join “groups” make groups, etc… I figured it would die like a fad at first, but by constantly improving, it seems to have managed to carve a considerable niche out of college online time.

The front page of a person’s Facebook

Here’s an example of a Friend visualization, showing who’s friends with who (from your school only, though seeing the connections from other schools would be cool too!)

Anyway, back to the funky stuff: I’m in a lot of groups, like “Caffeine Lovers!”, “Future Procrastinators of Tomorrow”… and then there’s the “Napervillians” check out this hilarious group description:

This is the premiere group repping Naperville at U of I. NaperVillains is simply about being an elitist in all ways, popping your collar, and oppressing the middle class. For guys, it’s about being good at everything and being spoiled, because every girl in your high school was ridiculously hot. For the ladies, it’s about being a perfect blend of intelligent and attractive. Furthermore, it’s about always getting what you want, never losing at anything, and expecting good things to happen to you.

Haha—that just completely represents the stereotypical “ Naperville ”. BTW being a HUGE Naperville population on campus, there IS an image out there, and this group just plays off of that with fun humor, and there’s about 140 members (yours truly included). Yes of course it’s all true~

What’s funnier, it all prompted some folks out there to create an “anti-Naperville” group! And these guys I can’t tell how serious they are, but here’s their description:

This is the anti Naperville group. Just look at what they said on their group:

“This is the premiere group repping Naperville at U of I. NaperVillains is simply about being an elitist in all ways, popping your collar, and oppressing the middle class. For guys, it’s about being good at everything and being spoiled, because every girl in your high school was ridiculously hot. For the ladies, it’s about being a perfect blend of intelligent and attractive. Furthermore, it’s about always getting what you want, never losing at anything, and expecting good things to happen to you.”

What is that? Incredibly lame. You people are cool and all, theres alot of you that are nice, genuinely good people. The thing is, your general town just makes itself look like the movie American Beauty. Rich republicans, nice cars, great athletic teams. You don’t have to rub it in. What makes things worse is that when they congregate, they start bashing their own townspeople and talk about their Naperville Soap Opera drama. Listen, NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR TOWN, YOUR DRAMA, YOUR NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS, YOUR RESTRAINING ORDERS, OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH NAPERVILLE . The truth has to be said.

Amusing, no? There’s also a “ Naperville sucks, sucks”; and a “ Naperville , sucks, sucks, sucks the most” but those are just stupid. People can post messages on group sites, and here’s MASSIVE props to Walter for his scalding comments on the Naperville sucks group, observe:

im the homeless guy who sleeps outside of barnes and noble. but, because i live in naperville , i still turn my nose up to you uncultured pigs. pfwah, ignorant non-napervillians, you’ll just never understand our infinitely superior culture.

 

Yea! You show em uncultured, non-naperville pigs! Haha—point being, fun stuff online, people need to get a sense of humor.

But speaking of superiority… after reading Albert’s Xanga, I realized that I do have some form of superiority complex, and often I feel that I am better and more entitled than the average UIUC kid. And really, I wouldn’t mind feeling stupid and being okay with it once in a while. I’m not saying that I dislike what I can do, contrary to that, I think I need to be MORE thankful of the gifts I have. The AAIV-LC taught me that. Being humble next to your fellow mortal and not offended is a gift that I have yet to discover.

And hopefully, I won’t have to go to Harvard to discover that. To gain a nice sense of respect and reverence for everyone, regardless of whatever standing they might have. No actually, to completely stop being so judgmental—really, who am I and what do I have to gain by thinking myself better than others? If that’s my motivation, to prove myself better than the dudes next to me, I still have a lot of maturing to do. Hopefully, selfish competition can go out the door ASAP, and I can truly begin to live for a higher cause.

As for the Napervillian club, lol—I think I’ve come to terms with the 3% or so of the population we make here at UIUC. And well, it’s not the worst thing in the world .

I WANNA GET OUTTA HERE!!!!!!