Summer 2010

Another school year finally ended and now summerrr. Once again I gotta say I'm getting old but no time for that cause there's been a lot of happenings happening so here goes!

Yaaaay! my sister and my brother graduated so I attended to two graduations, one being in san diego. My sister's graduation was pretty casual where people made loud noises and sang songs when they heard their graduate's name called. On the other hand, my brother's was formal and in order. I haven't gone to a catholic mass since high school so that kinda brought back memories. I went camping a lot since summer started with my pledge class, family, and church all at different places. I also went river rafting for the first time. It was fun although I expected more rapids.. But I can say that I'm pretty dark now. I could easily pass as filipino.. maybe ethiopian as well. I also went to disneyland/LA! If you guys know what the "give a day get a day" is, I did that and used my free disneyland ticket. I had the full fireworks experience for the first time! I had no idea it corresponded to an audio track which made it sooo much better. My friend described it as "magical" and I thought that was pretty corny but when I saw the fireworks I was trying so hard to hold in my tears. Also went to roscoes's chicken n waffles! and yes it was good, but I had to let go of my tears that time. Andd I just came back from new orleans attending the national youth gathering. it's for lutherans all over the country and it's like a convention with different speakers and performances. I thought that the previous gathering I went to 3 years ago was better but new orleans is a unique city. I tried pretty much all the food the city had to offer and it didn't fail to please me! I had their po-boys, gumbo, fried seafood, and beignets! nom nom nom I miss the food there already. If you don't know what those are, google image it! Words cannot describe the taste of pure joy.. but the pictures of the foods can help. (pictures on my facebook :D) The french quarter contained a lot of shops and historic buildings and I'm pretty sure that's where all the craziness happens during mardi gras. But yeahh it was quite an interesting city and I'm glad I got the chance to go. Although I doubt I would ever go there again since it was way too hot for me.. and vice versa Heeeyo. I missed my cold weather and clean air. going on vacation makes me appreciate home more. now an unplanned and disorganized summer left, the best part of summer.

seis de mayo!

I had a grrreat cinco de mayo. I ate home made korean food with my APO line and it was sooooo good. There was korean bbq, kimchi, beansprouts, other veggies, and suishi! We also played some mahjong afterward, the most asian things you can do on cinco de mayo. I never really realized how san jose gets super crazy during cinco de mayo until yesterday when a lot of the streets were closed and supposedly downtown was going berserk, but I was glad I was indoors.

Recently I've been contemplating about switching majors and whatnot so I talked to a lot of people who gave me some good advice. When I was sitting on the can, it made me think about how much you learn from other people at school, and not in school. There's so many things others can teach you that education can't. I don't know but I'm glad that I met different people who have so much to teach whether it just be like learning about san jose to advice on life lol. But yeah I'm just not sure about what to do career wise. I suppose I narrowed my future down to designing but who knows. So there is actually an industrial design major which is like more of the aesthetics of design and the artsy part whereas mechanical engineering doesn't really focus purely on designing but more of the the function/brains behind things. My adviser was pretty cool about it and suggested for me to take a little bit of both next semester, the only thing is that I just have to be at school for a little longer. I don't mind staying at school for awhile cause I already accepted the fact that the csu system is impacted and cheap just like a La Vics burrito. HAha ok sorry but being at a csu school nowadays sucks just cause there's so much pressure not to screw up and just signing up for classes every semester is a pain in the arm. nice. but whatevsss everything will work out in the end.

If anything I'll just follow in the bush man's footsteps or work on my stand up.. speaking of stand up.. I have a dog named Spot. He has no legs. I walk him everrryday. What a drag. HAHAH ah I'm on my way.

cinco de mayo!

i woke up to this song on the radio and now its stuck in my head. Quite catchy but why must it sound so girly!?

happy cinco de mayo!

Knights Of Cyndonia- Muse

I just thought this performance was pretty crazy. Almost surreal.

20 years young

Thank you everyone who wished me a happy birthday! It was quite overwhelming especially logging onto facebook. I feel quite loved by all my friends and family even from a simple, "happy birthday". I got a singing card from a friend along with a white blood cell stuffed toy haha. I had lunch with my line from APO; we went to Flames and had a good bonding time. After lunch, I met up with some of my high school friends that visited. We went to the Great Mall because I needed to get another pair of jeans. After that we ate at Wingstop and Iguana's.. so full. Oh and they got me a Dundie Award! hahah for those Office fans out there you know what it is. But yeah it was a nice day and thanks again!

I actually feel old this birthday, or at least older. I know a lot of people say, wow 20, you're so young! It's kinda scary or intimidating when people say how time will fly by and all that old people talk. As for the future, I have no idea what I want to do. Just taking it one semester at a time. Yet I do want to say that I'm not taking anything for granted now. I appreciate my good health: good vision, relatively good hearing, good pair of legs. I also do enjoy the presence of the people around me: new friends, old friends, family. So life's good. And for all you youngsters out there complaining about petty things, don't. You'll have plenty of time to complain when you're old. When I do get old, I want to be one of those old people that have crazy amazing stories to tell and I would always start with, back when Pluto was a planet.. Haha. I just don't want to regret, it's by far the worst feeling. But here's to a great 20 years of living and surviving, succeeding and failing. So in 60 years, ask me about my days as a young lad and hopefully I'll have a good story to tell you.

UC Riverside

Quite a weekend! My fellowship group in San Jose went to a SoCal/SJ praise night at UCR. We left on Saturday at noon and arrived around six even though the event started at 3, but we still had a good time. UCR has a pretty nice campus, very spacious. The auditorium we were in had a nice sound setup and the seats were comfortable.. Well we stayed over at a friend's house and had some fun choppin it up. The next morning we went to their church called Harvest church. This church was a mega-church, and by mega, I mean ultra. There were at least 1000 people and the service was like a performance, it was crazzzzy. There were cameras filming the choir, congregation, and pastor, which was all shown on the two big screens. The pastor gave a really powerful message about the many things from idolatry to eternal life. He seemed like he was the perfect pastor: engaging preaching style, never stuttered, jokes were actually were funny.. I don't usually talk about religion a whole lot since many people have their own opinions, but that service was really professional. I'm sure if anyone went their, they would be impressed as well. Also I kinda expected one of those in-your-face type of pastors, who would like condemn people since it was a really big church and I've seen those TV shows where people have demon spirits taken out of them. But the service was really good and everyone pretty much agreed with what he said.

After the service we went to Chipotle and got to talk again. I found out that some of them were gamers and they played Smash! Melee of course, not that lame/weak/insulting/garbage of a game Brawl. It was cool just talking about Smash cause one other guy was learning Samus and I felt like the old wise man sharing his life long tips and experiences..on how to lose.. We then headed back to San Jose, skipping the super bowl. However, we did stop by Sonics for the first time ever. We got out of the car and looked for the door but apparently Sonics is like one of those old school diners where people bring you food on roller skates. You order from a machine that is located at every parking spot and they had foods similar to McDonalds but also tatter tots, hot dogs, and many different slushies/shakes. It probably tasted better just because it always looked good on the commercials and I never had it.

This semester is gonna be a lot busier for me, which is good I suppose, since last semester I was so bored in my apartment. My physics and differential equations class are pretty hard so that should take up time. I plan to join a community service fraternity and also do more in my fellowship soo yeah we'll see how it goes.

1st day of class

Today was the first day of class for the spring semester and it was quite tiring. My first class was a physics lab but when I got to the classroom, class was canceled.. So I went back to my apartment somewhat frustrated since my next class was in 3 hours. The next class I had was differential equations. I said before that this class might be kinda hard but I was wrong, it's definitely hard no questions. I had no idea what was going on the whole hour and fifteen minutes. He gave out this worksheet on material we were supposed to know and I only knew maybe one question.. sigh it's going to be rough. My last class of the day was general psychology, which seems pretty easy. The teacher is nice and it seems pretty interesting. During class she was talking about a teacher and a learner so she wrote "leaner" on the board. She then said, "oops! forgot the 'r'!" and then she inserted the "r" and it spelled "leanrer" and she continued on with her lecture.. kinda funny how no one corrected her but just laughed lol. I guess that's the price I pay for attending a state school hahaha


Last weekend I went to UC Irvine to visit some high school friends. We also made a spontaneous trip to LMU to visit another amigo and to check out the campus. LMU has such a clean campus and it had a crazy nice view of LA. We were outside of my friend's dorm trying to enter the building to surprise him but a key was needed. We saw what we thought was an intercom so we dialed 2-1-1, his dorm number, but someone answered: Please state your emergency. So us 4 college students ran and hid around the corner like kids waiting for someone to enter the building so we could sneak in. We kidnapped him and then went to a Korean BBQ buffet called Manna, which had probably the best meat I've eaten in a long time.. we were there for 2 hours just eating different kinds of meat.

crazy view of LMU and LA




Oh and for those of you dying to ask me a question about anything but too lazy/scared to leave a comment, check out http://www.formspring.me/wellcomematt
It's pretty fun so ask away!

Retrace-Anberlin

I erased all the songs on my ipod in order to add some new songs. It also got to the point where I would skip almost every song just because I have been listening to the same stuff for yearss. So here's one of my new favorites I've been listening to..

Farewell Sea Lions

Only about a week left until school again but I'm somewhat excited. I have 2 hard classes and 3 easy classes so I guess it balances out. One of those classes is a beginners volleyball class which I'm looking forward to. P.E. classes in general are hard to get so I'm glad I got volleyball which I have at least a little experience in. But I also have to take differential equations which I heard is pretty tough. My friend said that he was so happy when he got a D- HAha ah man, it can't get any worse than that. He also said that you never apply it in engineering so that's good to know. Actually a lot of math and physics theories are never applied but still necessary for engineering majors. I still wonder if I really want to major in this or if it's because I just wanna meet Mr. Benjamin Franklin, many many times. Then again I can't really imagine myself majoring in anything else except maybe in business or aviation. But for now engineering is just fine.

On Thursday I plan to take a small trip to UC Irvine to visit some friends. I'm looking forward to that. Although there has been quite a storm arising in S.F. I heard that there were tornado warnings in SoCal as well. Oh speaking of not so pleasant news, the sea lions have gone missing! Yes it's old news but still big news! The many sea lions that once roamed Fisherman's Wharf freely, until recently, have vanished. (Actually I heard they're headed towards Oregon.) But what is interesting is that there is a rumor that the sea lions also departed before in 1989. And now with the disaster in Haiti, it all makes sense! Even though Haiti is no where near the pier.. Now that they're gone, we are more vulnerable to earthquakes than ever! What's even worse is that they're gone, maybe about 20 remain which are probably the rejects of the colony. But those smelly giant slugs with whiskers are practically San Francisco's mascots. Tourists from all over the world come here to admire their elegance and beauty. Now it's all up to the Bush Man to keep our tourists entertained.

New Format!

I took the whole day today to change the banner and template of my blog. If you don't know who the half naked man is, it's Travis Barker, drummer of the band Blink 182. I wouldn't say he's my all time favorite drummer but he's definitely up there. I used his picture just because his tattoos are pretty crazy. Other than that I used a plain template which was I had to resort to after hours of going through other templates.. but who cares! I finally got it done and now it's time to start my day. Hope you like it :)

happy holidays!

These past few weeks have been quite enjoyable just being able to relax and hang out. There's no anxiety of a final or project to do, the only thing I have to worry about is how I'm going to get home haha. Well I still have a good 3 weeks of winter break and I look forward to be able to do what I have been doing. I'm a little under the weather at the moment and thus I blog. I just have a sore throat but it's not too bad.

Christmas was as good as it could have gotten. I got to see all of my relatives on my mom's side which hasn't happened for a couple of years. It was pretty crazy seeing my cousins' children, everyone is getting old and fast. I remember when I was among the youngest and I would get dozens of presents from my aunts and uncles. Now we have a secret santa every year which is still fun. Speaking of secret santas, I was in four secret santas/white elephant this year and that was probably the toughest year to shop.

New Years wasn't as exciting as I remembered, 2010 just seems like another month has ended. But I do like to reflect on the past year and try to make a new year's resolution. This year, besides getting good grades, I want to try to be more independent. I plan to not come back home as often next semester as a start and just do more. Not sure what that exactly means but I know I'm not doing enough. Well hope everyone had a good new years and make sure 2010 counts!