4-Peat, even the Lakers couldn't do it.

Freshmen year, I walked into open gym volleyball at the John Wooden Center, not knowing a single person and too scared to play on the main court. One day, Chris Tuyay comes up to me to ask if I wanted to play on his Intramural team since their setter (lol Jorge) was injured. Their team name was named after a facebook app called... Fluff Friends.

After winning the Championships that year, we reformed the team the next year for the more competitive Co-ed league and won the championships again. On my third year, the seniors had graduated, but I decided to keep the team going and so I got together some new people and reused the old name. The championship game showcased two teams of people from open gym. And once again Fluff Friends prevailed!

And now we arrive at my fourth year at UCLA. Volleyball has grown much more popular, especially at open gym. At the start of the IM season, there were now 4 teams from open gym, whereas in the past there were only 2 (these two usually met up in the Championships). 

After a markedly more intense season and playoffs, Fluff Friends once again made it to the Championship Game. But this time we were against the Foxy Dolphins, a team made up of a few players from the Fluff Friends team from last year and more open gym people.

The funny thing about this game was how well we all knew eachother, not just within our own team, but within the opposing team as well. We have probably played with/against each other at open gym nearly a hundred times by now. And though we were all friends, for the next 40 or so minutes of this epic match, all friendships ended at the net. 

Coming from a 6 point deficit, Fluff Friends somehow managed to pull off a win in the first game of a best-of-3 match. The next game went to Foxy Dolphins after we took a pummeling from Shawn and Joey's spikes. Our two teams were so evenly matched. During the 3rd and final game, I found that I had become lost in the battle, and as I took a moment to catch my breath, I looked around the gym and there were so many people watching our game. Basketball players, other volleyball teams, IM sports staff, even the gym custodian was there watching what I would deem the hardest fought match of Intramural/Open Gym Volleyball of UCLA history (of course I've only been here for 4 years, but I'm sure the custodian would agree with me and he's been here longer.) Fluff Friends: 8 - Foxy Dolphins: 8... 9-8... 9-9... 10-9... 11-9... 12-9... 12-10... 13-10... 13-11... 13-12... 13-13... 14-13... Our serve, championship point... they pass, Shawn goes up for the spike, aw... 14-14... oh wait!--Megan dug Shawn's hit! Allison sets the ball, Erin goes up for the outside attack... the ball speeds over the net, the whole gym is silent. The ball bounces once inside the side line and rolls all way to the gym walls before the first cheers erupt. We won. WE WON!

I once asked Jorge why they decided to name the team Fluff Friends. His answer was, "Cause how would you feel if you lost to a team called Fluff Friends."

My First Date...

...with the rest of my LIFE. Today was the engineering career fair here at UCLA. I woke up 2 hours early. Got my usual bagel bacon, two orange juices, and tatertots from Ron's House (Rendevous) and went over a few of the big name companies that would be at the fair.

I was really excited; I never get to wear ties. I like ties a lot (now that I know how to tie them). After 30 minutes of figuring out which identical white collared shirt to wear, I finally picked up my 55 freshly printed resumes and left for the fair.

I felt really awesome as I walked down bruin walk in my nice clothes. No one ever double takes at me with shorts and flipflops.

The actual fair was indeed an experience. The atmosphere was intense, yet exciting. After walking a few laps around the grand ball room, I finally found the nerve (and the words) to talk to a recruiter. I started with Boeing. Mmm. At least she took my resume. I don't think it helped that I got her name wrong.. kristina, katrina.. meh pretty close. I blame kcheung.

After going through the other big Electrical Engineer employers: Raytheon, JPL, Northrop.. I stopped by St Jude Medical. They are a medical device provider. And when I told the recruiter that I was an Electrical Engineering major with an option in biology, I saw her eyes widen. (This was a much better reaction than when I told other companies I was EE and Biology). She even smiled as she wrote down on the back of my resume that my senior project was Design of Minimally Invasive Surgical Tools.I kinda messed up at the end when I didn't know what that actually ment, but I'm not even in that class yet, so how am I supposed to know?

I tried going to the Blizzard Entertainment booth, but they were stagnant on hiring non software oriented Electrical Engineers (no matter how much Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft experience you have).

On my way past the entrance I noticed a seemingly innocent girl standing, trying not to get swept away in the madness of the swarms of job hungry engineering undergraduates. I smiled when I noticed that seemingly innocent girl was kristina. For the rest of the fair, the two of us wandered the floors nervously poking into the various booths hoping that someone would have a need for an EE-bio, or a material science major.

At the end of the day, I felt like I really got alot out of this fair:

Two google shades, one book light, one sparkly google pin, and a shiny crystal thing I got from a chinese company to be exact.

p.s, 3M also makes things that are not sticky (i.e, braces). Who knew?

Frosh Frenzy

I went to frosh frenzy again this year. If you don't know what that is, InterVarsity hosts this all nighter event for new students from Friday night at 8pm to Saturday morning at 7am. Yup, thats eleven hours of fun, games, competition, eating, and no sleeping.

I was wearily impressed by this year's freshmen. By 3am last year, the game room was filled with people knocked out on the couches. Besides a few people in the sleeping rooms, this year, the only person that was knocked out was the girl Justin ran over during "Do you love your neighbor."

3am this year, in the game room people were still playing signs. I left to play some basketball then came back after three games or so and the same signs game was still happening.

Amy Hu's karaoke hour was also a surprising hit-- 4am in the morning and a room full of freshman are singing "A Whole New World"

No magic carpet here.

I spent my whole frosh frenzy last year playing volleyball. I vowed this year not to fall victim to that addiction. But after hours of signs and ninja, I found myself back in the gym in a circle of people focused on not letting a ball touch the ground.

I spent the rest of the night/morning resting in a tiny chair discussing catching leaves as they fall from trees and watching the sun rise. And so the night was over and day had come.
My parents picked me up from school and we drove to my grandpa's birthday party where I spent half my time sleeping.

Poohwho, Season 4 Premier

Mmmmm... yeaaahh... picture a day... I kinda failed. As some of you might know, I was doing medical school stuff all summer up to now. Even if I had kept up with my blog, each day you would just have a picture of a different page of my Kaplan MCAT book and I think that would violate some copyright or something.

Anyways here's a summary of what you missed:
1 week of summer break
study for mcat
study for mcat
took mcat
woo summer vacation for 5 days at lake powell, UT

started med school apps
woo school starts
yay rieber
yay friday lunch/volleyball crew

yay old friends
yay new friends
ahh med school apps due
ahh need more letters of rec.

okay now we are caught back up to the present.

Sprang Sang

Sorry about the title, I didn't want it to just say "Spring Sing", cause that's boring.

Tonight I went to my first spring sing as a UCLA student. "But Chris! You are on campus Friday night and you didn't go to volleyball?!" Yea, I know right? Its ok. My elbow is sprained so I thought I'd give it a rest through the weekend. I'll be back at open gym on monday.

Anyways, my first Spring Sing was pretty entertaining. People at UCLA are so talented. Me and kristina were talking about whether or not we would trade our skill in our respective sports (volleyball and softball) for skills in dancing. At first we both said yes, but as I am writing this I take it back. I love my vb :] Who needs dancing when you can get the satisfaction of smashing  balls at peoples' faces!

Ooo and they gave us glow sticks! This was actually the first time I actually broke my own glow stick. Grownups always seem to like to break your glowstick before they give it to you. WHY? Whats the point anymore? Its like popping all the bubbles in bubble wrap before using it to pack a shipment.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yea so that was my first Spring Sing. Today was also my first time going to the Young Research Library. Deep in the heart of North Campus (*shudder*), this library wasn't as difficult to find as I expected. The reason I went was to surprise my friend who works there. I forgot to ask her what floor she worked on, and as it was a surprise, I couldn't call to ask now. After searching all of floors 1, 2, and getting lost somewhere in the stacks of floor 3, I finally arrived at floor A (pshh leave it to North Campus to number their floors with letters).

After she gave me a tour of her desk, we left for friday sand volleyball with Happy Belly Productions.

Amazing stuff always happens on fridays. Whether it be clapping and cheering for friends with the RCC, or getting attacked by finger pointing clouds and mobile trees, fridays are always legendary. Me and Jo found these conveniently shaped objects on our way to volleyball.

Haha, ok im gonna go get some sleep for spring fling tomorrow. Yea, I know right? Spring Sing, Spring Sing... so many Spring Things.. haha see what I did there?

Super Awesome Ultra Master Ball Blog Post

Happy Birthday Jo!

Yesturday was May 9th. It was Jo's birthday.

I just met Jo a couple weeks ago, and I  found out her birthday is right in between mine and Josiah's. Together we share the ultimate birthday weekend. Another thing we all have in common is that every couple years one of us will have to share our birthday with Mother's day. Mine was on mother's day 2 years in a row, and this year it was Jo's turn.

Jo is a pretty cool girl. I first met her playing sand volleyball at saxon and I remember thinking, "pfff, this girl doesn't look like she can play. this will be interesting to watch." but actually over the past couple weeks, shes gotten pretty good. After our secret training sessions, she's mine and steven's secret weapon for friday sand volleyball.

2/3 of Super Birthday Weekend Complete.

Happy Birthday Jo Ana! and thanks for not throwing a water balloon at me :]

Happy Birthday Josiah!

Today is May 8th. It's Josiah's birthday.

I wasn't at school today so I didn't see him on his birthday.

He's a pretty fun kid. He does alot of things you don't really expect him to do (as you can see above). Anyways 1/3 of super birthday weekend complete.

Today I celebrated mothers day with both my dad's and mom's side of the families at separate parties. As always, I love to see my family again and to see how much they care for me. I must of been asked over 50 times how my eyes were doing.

these are two of my cousins on my mom's side.

my dad's side is crazy. i have an uncountable amount of cousins on that side. today we counted all our second cousins, so our cousin's kids. We have 35 second cousins.

Some of my cousins and their kids. Yay for mommies!

p.s, my new hedrick con video is finally finished. it was fun to edit :]

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=389593184131

Whoa!

Long time no post! Sorry I got lazy, but I'm going to try to get the picture a day going again.. starting now.

My birthday is coming up this monday! and amazingly, 2 of my friends birthdays are also this weekend, Josiah and Jotana! Today I got my facebook flooded with pictures tagged with me by Josh. I clicked the first one and this is what I saw:

Him, Connie, and Steven did this ultimate chalking sometime last night, but I still don't know what wall this is. Chalk Squad strikes again! Check out the video of them doing it, its amazing!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=1351328657498&comments

Thanks, Connie, Steven, and Josh!

Dear Steven, This is an Intervention

It is Steven's birthday today. All throughout highschool, Steven Chan has wanted one of my animal hats and I never got him one. So yesterday night, I lured him to my room in Rieber Terrace by saying I finally got him a hat. But when he got to RT 9th floor, instead of a hat waiting for him, there was an Intervention. Interventions are from the Show How I met Your Mother, and the purpose is to point out to a friend a specific area in their lives that are consuming them, usually to get them to stop doing it-- such as smoking, drinking, obsession with tanning salons, overuse of pyrotechnic magic tricks, or faking a british accent. Steven's intervention was about him being way too good looking. I am so glad Josh recorded this because, I havn't had a real laugh in a long time: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=1333076241199.

After the intervention, I told him that I had to run back to my room to grab is "real" present. On my way to my room I hit the elevator button and instead of running to my room, i hid behind the corner with a blanket at the ready. As soon as the elevator got there, I gave came back with my "present" all though it wasnt an animal hat. We threw the blanket over him and kidnapped him.

The rest of the story I cannot disclose over the internet, as it may contain incriminating evidence.

In other news, Rendevous has new orange juice, or rather its the same juice but different container. I feel as if theres more in this one.

Half A Grand worth of Spring Sing Tickets

So, im out of hard drive space and memory on my sd card for my camera. I have to be really choosy with the pictures I take now, so my selection for pictures of the day is becoming limited.

Anyways, yesterday I went to a nice Catalyst. Mike Eubanks talked about racism, an issue that we all pretend doesn't exist, yet we all know is still prominent. This is a pretty sensitive subject. As I am typing this, I think I have deleted and retyped the same sentence atleast 10 times already. Starting out in a predominately white elementary school, then moving on to a very ethnically diverse highschool, and now to UCLA where the majority of the student body is asian american, I consider myself pretty ethnically educated. Some people argue that all people are equal, but from my experience, there are huge differences between races. However, for me atleast, these differences are not governed by skin color but rather differences in culture. Its really amazing, how so many different cultures have emerged. And I am really glad that there are different races in the world, becuase without them, the world would be so boring.

Yea, I know this picture doesn't fit with the race theme since they are both chinese, but this is a nice picture from catalyst :P

Today, after class, I was walking back to my room near rendevous when I heard some people passing by saying, "Hey someone should go walk in front of them to see what they will do." I looked at where they were pointing, and noticed a group of people sitting in a straight line in front of rendevous, apparently clapping and cheering for people walking by. As my eyes focused, I recognized that it was Steven, Jordan, Josiah, Josh, Justin, and Mike Eubanks.

And so I joined in their fun...

 ...and silliness. 

And so the Rendevous Clapping Club or RCC was formed.

Oi, and all of today I was walking around with 528 dollars worth of spring sing tickets in my backpack. Why do I have so many you ask? Well, Joyce, Katherine, and I woke up early in the morning to go wait in line. Between us three, we were to buy tickets for us and 22 IV friends. In line we met up with some other IV people and the group of us together bought nearly $1800 worth of tickets!!! 

And so I was put in charge of my 22 tickets for the day since Joyce had to go to class.

If you bought tickets from Joyce, just pay her and get your ticket from her cause I'm gonna give her all the tickets tomorrow.

Yea, so that was the beginning of my day. It was fun. The end of my day was also pretty fun. Steven and Josh invited me to go play volleyball with them at Sunset. I never play beach, but it was a really nice day so I went anyways. I made some new friends and it was a nice change to be playing volleyball outdoors for once and without much competitive pressure. Towards the end, a group of guys showed up and challenged us, so we formed a team and I'd say we represented quite well. The net was a foot lower than regulation so me and steven got to show off a little :]

Today was a pretty nice day, but alas friday is almost over and I must get back into engineering mode.

Don't Stop Believing

So as many of you may know (or not know), my chalk work on the Puzzles Stairs yesterday night was erased by sprinklers this morning. But a little water can't stop the Chalk Squad. After refilling my supply of happy sticks, I decided to rebound tonight! This time however, I was not alone. At my sides were Connie and Sarah. We not only rewrote what water had erased, but added a few extra touches with our combined minds. It was not an easy task either, mind you; it surprised me how many people ventured the Puzzle Steps at 10:00pm after Mark Study.

Courageously, the Chalk Squad worked as many eyes stared and judged us on their way up. It really made my heart glow when a girl stopped to say she always wanted to meet the people who wrote all those things. She called us the "Happy Writers"... lol.

As I walked back down the stairs later alone to take pictures of the newly improved stairs, I heard a guy telling his friends, "THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!" And at the top I heard a couple laughing after one of them said "its funny because we actually live in Hedrick." Haha, and when Connie wrote the "Jia Yo" I asked her if she thought anyone would be able to actually read the chinese characters, and just as I said that, a girl passing turned back and exclaimed, "I can read it!"

I'm happy I was able to leave some mark at UCLA, even though it will be erased by the next time the plants need watering.

Here are the newly improved steps:

Chalking up the Puzzle Stairs

The Chalk Squad strikes again! This time, instead of the usual party cats and moorawrs, I moved on to encouraging statements! We are so used to seeing our teachers and professors chalking up the blackboards with a bunch of boring school stuff, and most of the time the things they write on the board make us sad. The Chalk Squad's goal on the other hand, is to use these little sticks of white powder to make students happy.

So the next time you walk up by Deneve on the way to the Hill or up the Puzzle Steps near Cafe 1919, it is completely normal to find yourself smiling.

I think I will wait until after class tomorrow to post up my pictures and video so it doesn't ruin it for ya! I can tell you i was really happy as I was doing it because people coming up the stairs were all smiling as they trudged up each step. I even got a hug from one of the girls walking up behind me! Amazing what just a little chalk can do.

Goodnight!

UPDATE: I forgot to take into account the sprinklers that go off on tuesday mornings.. soo all my hard work got erased.. no matter! I won't be stopped that easily!
I guess I can post the pictures now.

Check out the video of it! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=380144849131

Oh and also a new addition to the party cat wall:

New Quarter

 First bit of news: my dad replaced the glass on my camera's broken LCD window.. wooohooo!

Thanks Dad!

Sooo, Spring Quarter's started and I'm back in school. Its nice to see everyone again and I'm glad to see most of them havnt changed much over the week of spring break.

It seems a lot of people got their hair cut-- or hair changed would be a better description.

Gosh, Michelle is so cool. I'm serious.

I like Pirate Connie's new hair too:

Even though Spring Break was really only for a week, I've really missed the faces of IV.

Walking on bruin walk near the dorms, you might have seen the chalk drawings of the party cats on the wall saying "Slow Down, Appreciate the Beauty Around." Every time I walk by it, it makes me smile. I learned that it was my friends, Steven Chan and Jackie that did it, and I was inspired to find some chalk to add to the wall. 

I had the chalk with me late one night after open gym, and so MooRawr was given an animate form:

 Steven later added his own version of moorawr near the north campus elevators on Charles E Young:

Easter Sunday

This past weekend I went home for Easter at my church. This was the first year I wasn't in the choir to sing on Easter because I was studying for my MCATs. 

So this time I was privileged with just sitting and watching our youth group's performance.

Well, the performance was just like all the other Easter Sunday performances we have every year. The audience watched quietly as the small youth group (missing me and my brother this year) sang a few songs.

On the third song however, I felt the pew I was sitting on start swaying underneath me. I looked at my brother on my right and immediately whispered "earthquake" to him. A few moments later a murmur flows throughout the church as everyone has noticed that we were in the middle of an earthquake. The microphones on stage start sweeping back and forth. The blinds on the windows violently rattle. A few people leave their seats and sprint for the exits. But as all this is happening, I looked up at the choir, but they are still standing there singing. My cousin, Rachel, on the piano, has a look of full concentration on her face as she plays through the song.

then... my grandpa sitting in the front row starts to clap along with the song, and then one by one, each person in the church joins him in clapping. And by the end of the song, the entire church was smiling and clapping.

Whether you think it was a sign sent from God or just some random natural event that coincidentally occured during a song on Easter Sunday, all I can tell you is that something different was within my church that day. And not to abuse the theme of Easter, but it felt like my church was revived with energy and spirit after this incident. It made me feel really happy, like in the movies when the good guys rally together to overcome evil. When I think back on it, if the earthquake had happened at any other time during that day, there would have been no feeling of happiness. I mean, even if it was during the Pastor's sermon, the only thing people would have felt would have been fear. Instead, because it happened during the song and brought the church together as one. I can't think of any other time that I have seen that many people smiling, laughing and clapping during a natural disaster.

I have class now so I have to go, but here are some pictures from the party we had after chruch:

my little cousin. she won a chicken and edible grass. easter bunny! cute!

My mom, her mom, and her sister!