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!

nom nom nom

This post is a much not needed break from studying. My finals are on Monday and Tuesday and I really need to buckle down. I'm confident that once I start studying I'll be prepared, just gotta start. Anyhoot during my physics class there was this one kid who sat diagonal from me who always wears the same dragon jacket. I'm no fashion police but a whole semester? But I admit, when I saw his Naruto fingerless gloves, I got pretty jealous. What really amazed me was that he was picking his nose as if he was the only one in the room and it got pretty disgusting. Not only was he picking away, he was eating them! He was having his own buffet during class. I wanted to look away but I was just in shock that people still do that his age. Now I know it's even more juvenile to make fun of others but this is merely an observation and it has opened my eyes. Maybe this only happens at state schools.. or only during physics classes.. or he could just be hungry, who knows? Again sorry for blogging about this, it's just that I have no idea why he would eat his own boogers.. since earwax tastes so much better!

aw

I gotta get my stuff together. My priorities have been screwed up for the longest time now.. and I just realized it. Well I always knew it but I've been ignoring it.. Ah too late to fix it, just gotta move on and maaaybe it'll fix itself over time. Ha that doesn't really make sense. Sorry for the emo post. Soo here's a good chuck norris joke! or should I say chuck norris fact: chuck norris can win at connect 4 in 3 moves. Hahahaha. ok gotta studyyy. It's the final countdown!

Midterms, Thanksgiving, Zombies

Hey gals and pals (more like only pals..) its been awhile since my last post. I just finished with my calculus midterm and I thought I did alright. I know I didn't get an B but hopefully a high C or low B. There were some material that I thought I knew but apparently not thorough enough. I went back home on Friday to record with the fellowship gang which was pretty fun. I then stayed over at my friend's house because we planned to go to Sunnyvale for the NorCal Regionals street fight 4 tourney. My plan was to stay and watch for a little then study on Saturday and Sunday. We got to the tourney pretty late but it was still crowded and there was a strong scent of body odor and weed that filled the room. There were a lot of setups going on which was impressive. Marc and Norb had a 2v2 money match with 2 other guys but lost to a blanka.. I won't go into detail.. But other than that I've been studying for that midterm.

Now it's pretty much smooth sailing until next Monday. I have class tomorrow and one on Wednesday. My dad's side of the family plan to have Thanksgiving at Tahoe so I think I'm getting picked up on Wednesday. Yesss no cal train. I'm excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas since I haven't seen my cousins in a long while. And of course the best meals of the year!

Ohh I had the crazzziest dream last night but no one to tell...

So my family and friends walked went into this restaurant that was apparently owned by nazi zombies.. yes, and it gets better.. We wanted to leave but it was too late cause everyone was looking at us so we went into this back room to play it off and for some reason I was in a wheelchair pretending to be handicap even though I was walking later.. At first it was hard to tell that they were even zombies since they all looked normal and even some of my friends were zombies, but eventually the zombies just went crazy and we had to defend for our lives. At one point they were all outside of the room where we were safe in. We planned to open it and just kill our way out so I picked up a skateboard and when the door opened I was bashing people's faces LOL. I won't mention which of my friends/acquaintances were zombies but it got intense.. I distinctly remembered smashing Will Smith's face. HAHA. Soo random. But man that was one of the most crazy yet entertaining dreams I ever had.. so ridiculous! I assume that dream was the result of watching a Quentin Tarantino marathon and a lot of Fresh Prince.. Hahaha. When I woke up I was pretty much laughing.

broomballinnn

Yesterday I played broomball with the fellowship I go to at san jose. I didn't think that I was gonna go since I didn't get a call or make an effort to get a ride. But I received a call close to the evening and was able to get a ride with someone from SF state. It felt kinda sketchy being asked what color i'm wearing and to get into a random car haha. But they were really nice to give me a ride both ways. We ate at Red Robins and then met up with people from UC Berkeley and SF state to play some broomballll. Broomball is like hockey but you don't use skates. You kinda run and glide on the ice and use this stick to hit the ball. There were about 30 people who went and it was pretty fun. Falling kinda sucked but I guess its a part of the sport.

Liu Xiang is back!

The renown Liu Xiang is back at the track. It has been over a year since his last race but now he is back in action and taking no prisoners. He went through surgery to fix his achilles injury that caused him to pull out of the Summer Beijing Olympics. But the results from the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix in September show that he has fully recovered and is better than ever.






London, Summer 2012.

Midterminated

Hahaha I actually stole that title from my friend's facebook status.. but yes, it is that time of year again, midterms! I just finished taking my calculus midterm and it was not the greatest. I forgot really basic calculus stuff which hurt because I knew those were easy points gone. I also got the results for my physics midterm today. I scored a 12.85 out of 29 points.. but there's something called a curve, and I got a B-! I was somewhat satisfied but in order to get a B, I needed 12.95, a tenth of a point more. I looked through the whole test just trying to find some partial credit that the professor might give me. I found an answer that I wrote which was supposed to be right, just that I plugged in a wrong number, and I showed it to the professor. I didn't thing that he would give me credit. However, it worked! I got a quarter of a point. Just like that shamwow! I got myself a B. I was really glad that I took that chance and begged for that forth of a point. Yeah, pointless post once again but that's the most interesting thing that happened recently. I have a philosophy midterm next Monday so time to hit the books!

Track & Field

Today is my easy day only having my film class. The class is pretty nice so far although it's 3 hours long. The lectures are kinda boring actually and we usually watch a movie right after. My class starts at 1:30 so I got to sleep in and I started to study for the test later on. All of the professor's lectures were online so it was pretty easy to study for. But when I got to the classroom, apparently class was canceled for today. Another student next to me saw the sign and was like, "Couldn't he just use email?" Ha. But yeah that was a waste of time.

And I have noticed that my banner is really weak compared to other people's blog. I don't really have the patience or skill to make one so I'm stuck with the default ones.. yes that is my excuse for having such an ugly blog. Plus, I rarely take pictures let alone be in pictures so I don't put up many pictures either. But I recently dug up my track pictures and I put them up on facebook and I was thinking of blogging about my track experience or maybe one in particular since I could post up some pictures too. So here goes.

If you didn't know I did hurdling and long jump for the majority of my track and field career. I would say I was below average at both but never last Haha. Our school competed in the West Catholic Athletic League (WCAL) which was supposed to be one of the toughest leagues in California (hence why I was below average but no johns). I also did some 4x100 and 4x400 relays as well which were in my opinion the funnest events to do. I actually hated running the 400 but as I did it more it wasn't too bad. One race I remember clearly was the one against Riordan. I only have some bad pictures of the below. But on with the story!

So to set the stage, in one of the early meets in my senior year, I was the anchor leg for the 4x400 against Mitty. I was about 5 meters behind the guy ahead of me for the whole lap around and when we hit the last straight away, I was slowly catching up to him. I pretty much caught up to him and was at his side and it was kinda funny cause I remembered that if I swung my arm harder I advanced a little then he would advance a little bit and it went back and forth. It was like those over dramatic car races on tv. But I ended up losing and I was pretty mad.. but yeah. That was one of the best races I participated in until the Riordan meet. Fast forward to the end of the season. So the 4x400 race is always the last race of the meet so usually this event got the most attention. The race started and Riordan took the lead for the first lap but when Paul got the baton he was able to catch up and take the lead. Our second and third runners were the fastest 400 runners we had on our team and by the time I got the baton I had about a good 40 meter gap between the Riordan guy. I remember watching Jarret (third runner) run around the track and he had a crazy lead on his guy and the Riordan runner I was up against said something like, "Aw come on man. Now I gotta work." And for the record, this guy beat Jarret in the 800 meter race with a really low time. He was also pretty cut, about 6 something, and black. So when he said that I was so scared. My legs were shaking and when I got the baton I took it and ran for my life. I remember my coach saying, "Let's go Matt, make him work." I guess my coach knew that he was going to catch up so that added to the fear factor. I was always taught to sprint the first curve, ease up on the straight-away, then slowly speed up during the second curve and go all out on the last straight-away. So once I was past the halfway point, there were two of my teammates cheering and one said, "hurry he's catching up!" I was like what the- already!? So I started to speed up trying to save my energy. And right before the last straight-away, another teammate yelled, "RUN MATT!" And that's when I knew I should go all out. I didn't even think that he would catch up so fast and plus I didn't hear him or see his shadow coming up. The only reason I knew he was behind me was because everyone was jumping, screaming, and doing flips. My left ear was ringing after the race because my team was on the field and they were basically yelling right into my ear as I ran down. That straight-away was the longest 100 meters I ever ran. It was so scary. I was just hoping that I wouldn't see him and when I crossed the finish line, I was so relieved that I never saw his back. And then right after, I grabbed a basketball and dunked on him. Hahaha nah, he was by far the better runner but there's no "I" in "team" bahaha. After the race we had our usual Alma Mater chant/mosh pit and I had my glory. I remember I felt so happy as I was walking out with Kaeneth.. that was a good way to end track.

Well here's some pictures.. Wow this is a really long post, sorry

Mike was the first leg and he handed it off to Paul



Paul to Jarret



Jarret to me



Mitty pictures





I guess that Mitty guy felt the same way I did hahaha.

Labor Day Weekend

The past Labor Day weekend was a fulfilling one. On Friday I took Cal Train home right after my morning class so I got home pretty early. It was nice just being at home so early. I still think I should get a car which would make it so much more easier. The prices for both Cal Train and Muni rose so now I pay $8.50 to get home. Well I do have the luxury of coming home whenever I want so that's satisfying enough. On Saturday I went to my friend's birthday party which was pretty fun. I expected it to be awkward since I only knew a few others there but everyone was friendly and were more than willing to chat. I stayed over at his place and the next morning Angelo drove me home pretty early just in time for church.

On Sunday some of the youth/young adult wanted to eat dinner at this BBQ place in San Mateo. We went our different ways since some wanted to do some shopping before hand but I decided to just go home first. My little cousins came over to also to play but I just wanted to take a nap since I slept around 3 on Saturday. But they made a lot of noise so I didn't really get a good nap but it was all good. I woke up pretty late and didn't expect to make it to the dinner. But I get a phone call from my cousin and they were ten minutes away hah. It was cool that they drove the opposite direction just to pick me up. The restaurant had this "Belly Buster" which could feed 4 people or a NFL lineman (not one of my usual bad jokes, actually on the menu). So we 3 of those since there were 12 of us but it failed my expectations. The food was good, lots of meat, just that I expected it to be more like the pho challenge. After that, we decided to go to Classic Bowl but when we got there, we found out that Sea Bowl had an evening special which was half the price of Classic Bowl. So being the Asians that we were, we jumped into our cars and headed to Sea Bowl. When we got there, we had to wait for about an hour to bowl.. It was a long night but a good one.

Oh and at church I was reminded of a childhood story about lice, yeah really random. In the forth grade, everyone had to be checked to see if they had lice since it was spreading the school. Found out that Annabel had lice who was in the same grade as me. (kinda messed up that I'm using her name, sorry!) Well I sat next to her at the time so I was trying to keep my distance. But I remember the kid to my left farted or something and it really stunk so I was about to move over to the right but Annabel was right there. I felt really trapped that whole day. HAhaha. what torture.. But yeah good times.

Starting Second Year

This is the first week of school and it is going pretty good. I'm rooming with my asian roommate from last year and a high school friend at an apartment this year. The apartment is pretty nice but the only bad thing is that it's about a 15 minute walk from SJSU. There is a bus but it doesn't come too frequently.. And this doesn't help the fact that I have 8:30am and 8:00am classes. I'm not too sure if many of you have heard, but there have been some major budget cuts in California. SJSU, along with other CSU schools, has been pretty screwed over by this. I feel lucky that I got 15 units but the times of these classes are pretty bad. Along with the budget cuts, professors are supposed to have furlough days meaning no class. I'm surprised at myself that I wasn't rejoicing because I need all the help I can get in my physics and calculus 3 class. Hopefully it'll all work out.

Today in my lab for my mechanical engineering class, we were assigned to draw different shapes using AutoCAD. It sounded really complicated but I think it was just because the TA had a strong Indian accent and that I sat in the back and couldn't hear him. So during his instructions, people in the back were just talking amongst themselves trying to figure it out on their own. The class seemed pretty interesting and surprisingly there were girls in the class. It's pretty rare to find girls in the science/engineering classes but yeah. Tomorrow is going to be my film class and I'm really looking forward to that.. Well hope the year is a good one