Mammoth 2010

Heya guys, sorry for not posting this whole weekend, but I just got back from a ski trip to Mammoth with my fam bam! So now get ready for 4 days worth of blog posts in one! 

Its okay if you just want to look at the pictures, who needs words anyways, especially when pictures are worth a thousand of them. :]

Thursday - March 18, 2010: Poly Reunion!
My parents picked me up from school after my last final and we got back to Long Beach in time to watch my brother's first season game of the year at my highschool.  I arrived at the gym and was surprised to see many of my high school friends who had also already graduated. One of them was Jamie who also goes to UCLA with me now:

A couple of the og poly volleyballers, although not as old as me. They are my padawan :P

Poly eventually won the match in 5 games.

Friday - March 19, 2010: Departure!


I packed my stuff all morning as my parents went to work and my brother was at school. When they got home we threw everything in the car and tried to get out before rush hour.

Bye Bye home!

Stopping at a Pizza Hut somewhere between Long Beach and Mammoth, I got a chance to take pictures of the cool sunset. My brother says hes gonna use this picture if he ever makes an album. I just tell him to use it to make a facebook already. The pretty sky is for you Esther, though it would be a lot nicer without the cars and electric wires, darn humans!

We arrived at my aunt's house in Mammoth at around 11:00pm, I was amazed there was still snow this late in the year.

Saturday - March 20, 2010: Hitting the Slopes!


No, I did not bring my D90 with me to the slopes (my dad wouldn't let me). However, I did get some pictures of us before we left to go skiing.

Up early at 6:00am, me and my brother wash up to get to the ski lifts. Can you tell which one of us is a morning person, and which is not?

  

Tighty-whities (and blueies?)! Thanks for reading this far, I now reward you with an embarrassing picture of myself. In my thermals, sometimes I feel like a swordsman, "en-gaurde!"

I think it was from watching the Vancouver Olympics or something, but I finally got over my fear of jumping on the ramps. I used to do the jumps when I was a kid, but everything seems so much higher when I grew up. I also skied down from Facelift to the bottom of Stump-Alley at full speed non-stop.   On my way down, I heard people in the chair lift cheering! At the bottom my heart was pounding out of my jacket and my thighs could melt snow because they were burning so much.

Like I said before, I was surprised there was so much snow still this late in the year. The only difference was that I was only wearing a shirt and my ski jacket, but I was sweating because it was warm.




Sunday - March 21, 2010: The Return!


The last day was beautiful. We cleaned up my aunt's house then went outside to take some pictures before leaving.

Nom nom nom.

Hehe, me and my brother look so big when we stand next to my mom.

My mom and dad love sight seeing. And when I was little it was so annoying. We made little stops everywhere to take pictures and a 1 hour drive would turn into a 5 hour scenic route. But now I think I'm finally beginning to enjoy these small pauses in life. After my last 10 week blur of a quarter, I had no complaints each time my dad pulled over on the side of the road to look at a tree or a mountain. 

 You may find it funny that I said my dad pulls over to look at mountains, but its amazing how sometimes we live our lives and we overlook the smallest of God's creations. What does it say about us, if we drive past the largest of these creations without even a glance?

Ok one last picture:

On the freeway out of Mammoth, we saw this. A dog sled team, haha, so cool!

Friends

I have the best friends evar. Today steven came over to Terrace to deliver my lucky pencil for my final final tomorrow morning. I met him in the lobby but he wasnt holding just my lucky pencil but also:

Kristina had sent it with Steven all for Me!

I opened it when I got back to my room.

I have the best friends evar.

Best Finals Week Day Ever

Update: I noticed this post was too long so here is a summary for those who don't want to read the whole thing:

-----Summary-----
I had my hardest final today. But first I ate lunch with Esther. We talked about space jam. Theres a lesson to be learned from watching the first scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuXBeVqdbkM&feature=related#t=32s.

While I was taking the final, it was really hard and I couldnt do some of the problems. I only had 40minutes left and began to panic. Then I stopped panicing and prayed. Then I was able to finish the test! Thanks God.

[Skip to bottom for inspirational photo]

-----End of Summary-----

Today was the best day ever of all my finals week days. Today was also the day I had to take my hardest final of the quarter, EE131A. It was at 3:00pm. I woke up at 8:00AM to start studying. Then I went to lunch with Esther which was a huge break from my studies. For the past week I havn't really hung out or talked to anyone else since I had to study and my back was sprained so I didn't see any of my volleyball friends. Somehow the movie Space Jam came up in our conversation, particularly the scene in the beginning where Michael's dad tells him he doesn't have to go to bed until he misses a shot.

Heres the clip.

After lunch I immediately went back to my room, but before continuing to study I looked up that scene in Space Jam. It is wierd because in that scene Michael's dad also says to Michael that if he gets good enough, he can do anything he wants to, and strangely that also came up in mine and Esther's conversation. Up till now, I always had the image of Michael Jordan having pure natural talent. But what is hidden in this simple intro scene, is that Michael Jordan was able to become the figure head of Basketball, not through pure natural talent, but through will and determination. Not only did his dad clearly say it, but it can also be observed in the scene. Michael was not in the house sleeping like he was supposed to, but he was outside practicing. He was practicing so that one day he would be good, and if he was good, he could do anything.

I just mark studied the intro to space jam.

haha.

So at 3:00 I took my EE131A final. There were 6 problems. The final was 3 hours long. At 1 hour left, I had skipped 3 problems, which I left blank cause I had no idea how to even start them. I finished the other 3 problems then went back to stare at the three I skipped. 10 minutes past, and all I had managed to accumulate on my exam was a pile of eraser shavings.I wondered if this test was hard for anyone else. I looked to my left where my friend was sitting, staring at the ceiling with her test in her lap. 20 minutes past, 40 minutes remaining, my friend had surrendered and left sometime in the last 10 minutes. I started thinking about what I would do if I failed this class. Thinking about this made my throat clog up and I started thinking about how embarrassing it would be for me to have to pull out my inhaler in the middle of this exam. "I believe I can fly" started looping in my head.

So I stopped thinking. I closed my eyes. And prayed.

I opened my eyes and looked at the problem. Nope, no new insight.. but wait, I then noticed I had written down something wrong, I fixed that and now the problem was easily solved. As I turned the page to the next problem I skipped, I remember thinking, "impossible.. that prayer could not have worked."

After rereading the next problem, I realized how easy it was. "Thank you Lord!"

Last problem, 9 minutes remaining. I looked at it, but i could not figure it out still, "Come on Lord!"
2 minutes remaining. "Ah its okay, thanks for the help with the other 2 problems" And with 1 minute left I quickly wrote out a "partial credit" type answer.

40 minutes ago, I didn't know how to do half of my test. And now, I had an answer for every question. Pretty good day I'd say.

Even more strangely, as I stood up to turn in my test, I immediately noticed I didn't feel any pain in my back.

You are an awesome God.

EE3

So my back is still killing me, but I managed to go to brunch today. It was nice seeing all the IV people in the dining halls again. Its funny how branched out IV is. Everywhere I go, I have to see somebody from IV, whether it be in the dungeons of Boelter Hall, in the dining halls, or even in just looking out the window of my dorm room.
Its amazing to think that it all started with just a small group of 30 members, and 16 upperclassmen who stayed in the dorms. God is amazing!

Something else amazing occured to me today. I'm taking EE3 right now, its the Introduction to Electrical Engineering class, but I am a third year EE major already so its kinda funny to be in that class with a buncha freshmen. All the scores from homework and midterms were just posted this morning and after emailing the professor for the corresponding weights, I calculated that I don't even have to take the final this thursday to pass the class (the class is pass/fail only, so getting anything better than a C- is a P). And as you can see, I forgot to do one homework assignment too.. haha. Woohoo! One less final.

p.s, Maybe I should still take it just in case?
p.p.s, HAPPY PI DAY!

The King's back

Hehe, if you didn't notice, the title of this post is a play on the title of one of my previous posts titled "The Return of the King." This time, however, the apostrophe 's' is not a contraction of the word king and is, but rather it's possessive, because my back is injured.

Yea, so this morning I couldn't get out of bed. I had to wait until my roomates left the room so that I could freely gasp in pain as I pulled myself out of my bed with the bunk ladder.

Kristina called me asking if I wanted to go to brunch, but i said I couldnt, so I stayed in my room and explored various positions in which I could study without my back hurting. After maybe 2 hours of studying while lying on the hard floor, I decided to take a break so I opened a bag of chips and a gallon of apple juice and watched modern family.

Half way through the episode, I heard a knock on the door. It was Kristina and Steven. Since I couldn't go to brunch they decided to bring brunch to me! It was really nice of them! But because my back was messed up, I hadnt taken the time in the morning to fix up my hair and change out of my pajamas as I didnt plan on going outside or seeing people today. Furthermore, my desk was full of papers from studying and EE projects. On top of that, I had a bag of chips open and an almost empty gallon of apple juice on the floor where I was studying. Haha, I must have looked like a complete slob!

It would be a lie for me to say I don't care how other people see me, and I'm not actually the type of person to care for those kinds of things (i mean, i AM an engineer major right?), but today i felt especially off gaurd. But then I realized, real friends are those people who you can be a slob in front of. If you can really call someone your friend, then that means you can just be yourself around them. NOTE: I am not saying that for me, being myself means being messy all the time. I'm only messy when I have lots of school stuff to do, and lots of back pain.

Anyways, lesson here isn't that being a slob is bad. The real moral is not to be fake, but if you have to, atleast be real with your friends. And if you are actually a slob, I would suggest you watch Wong Fu's Hygiene video.

This is where I'm gonna sleep tonight because before I went to sleep on my bed yesterday, I could actually sit without hurting. I think my bed made things worse, so lets rug it out on the ground! Pooh Bear Grylls style. I love camping!

p.s, Kristina, I did shower.
p.p.s, "Hey guys, what are you doing here. I'm still in my jammy jams!"
p.p.p.s, "We should stack the desks!"
Lol, two office references and they havn't even watched the episode yet.

(Not So) Mini Tonthat

So, I sprained my back at open gym today. I'm really sad. I hope I can pull a wolverine and heal by sunday so I can play with en-wei and friends, I was really mad I couldn't play to the end tonight.

Even though I'm really hurting, I just found out something that completely outshines my misfortunes.

Yup, my brother is attending UCLA next year. I bet you all are excited to meet Mini Tonthat, but let me tell you now that hes not so mini compared to me. 

I'm really excited because I was the first in my family to find out. They are all in san diego right now at the Best of the West volleyball tournement with no internet access. I called up my mom and told her he didnt get in and I talked to her about UCSD for like 30 minutes before telling her i was just kidding. hahaha.

Its wierd because I was at the Best of the West tournement 3 years ago when my mom called me each time I got an acceptance letter (yes, back then they still came in the mail). Its also cool because this is the first year my highschool's volleyball team has been back to the Best of the West tournement since I graduated.

Comparison

Sorry Earl, this is yet again, another volleyball post.

I recently found an old video from freshman year of me and bao spiking, late at night after open gym. It made me realize how long ago that was and it got me wondering how much (if at all) I have improved my volleyball since then. Freshman year I was just out of high school and all throughout high school I never got to hit because I was the only setter for 4 years.

I'd like to think that my hitting has improved over the years so I brought my camera out to Open Gym once more and recorded again from the exact same spot (only with a better camera this time :). I know for a fact that I can't jump as high as I did in high school (thank you, freshman 15 and rendevous), but for some reason it felt like I was hitting harder now. My friend who has seen the old video and knows how I hit now says I still hit the same as I did in the video. The only difference was that back then I hit "softer". I don't know if I should take that as compliment or not.

In my opinion, I think I have just gotten better at timing to make up for the lost hops.

Anyways, the video will be out as soon as I get to sorting through all the videos, and that should happen some time this weekend when I get bored of studying for finals.

I got these shots from still captures from  the the videos. (Thats why they are worse quality than my normal pictures).

Aside from volleyball, this got me thinking of other ways I have changed since freshman year:

- I eat more and run less.
- I have black kneepads instead of white ones now
- Short hair cut
- I get worse grades, but am much smarter now
- I go home a lot less
- I leave my dorm room for things other than open gym
- I wear jeans, shoes, and a sweater to class instead of tank tops, shorts, and flip flops.
- I go to church and read my bible when I don't go home for the weekend.

- My eye sight has gotten worse

- But I dont play video games anymore

- I have a buncha taiwanese friends

- I have friends outside of volleyball who arnt electrical engineers and some of them are even girls!

- I have IV

p.s, I'm missing alot of things.
p.s, I'm thinking this list will explode next year when I move to Rieber :)

UPDATE:
Heres the new video: Click
Heres the old video: Click

The Return of the King

Yup, I am back!

Sorry for the 5 days of no posts. So much for a picture a day! As most of you know, I'm an electrical engineer major. All upper division EE classes have a project at the end of the quarter, on top of the regular homework (which are projects in themselves), midterms, and studying for finals. Now this quarter I am taking 3 upper division EE classes soooo that means 3 end of the quarter projects. The first two I handled pretty easily, each only taking a full day's focus. The last project for EE141: Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems (I have to say the whole name to show that I no longer fear it, like Voldemort) TOOK FOREVER.

I have been working on this project since last sunday. After going through almost a whole packet of lined paper, I finally finished it last night, or should I say this morning. I finished it at 6am and woke up for class again at 7am.. haha.

I noticed how insane my desk looked and I took a picture of it at around 4:00am.

Oh speaking of insanity, that project was pretty insane. It was so hard that I even had to go to office hours to get some help from the TA. And I wasn't the only one. FYI, the TA is standing in the far corner somewhere.

Ooo, you know what else is insane in that picture? Theres actually a girl somewhere in the picture. Its like "wheres waldo", except now its "try to find the girl". Found her? Take a picture of any Electrical Engineering class and you can play again. 

But even amongst all that chaos, as I sat in the office hours trying to squeeze around inconsiderate people blocking my view of the board, I looked out the window and was reminded of God's serenity. And at that moment, I knew that I could get through these next couple weeks.

Hoppy Birthday

Hehe, I'm so clever.

We "surprised" stephen today for his big 4 0. hehe jk jk, we didnt really surprise him.

- i got a text to meet at 12:45am in the hedrick turnaround.
- I got there at 12:46am and i saw my friend working in hedrick lobby so i went in to talk to him.
- at 12:50ish, stephen hop comes out of the stairwell and sees me standing in the lobby with my camera..
- i smile and pretend nothing is unusual with me standing in hedrick lobby at 12:50 in the morning with my camera around my shoulder.. he doesn't suspect a thing.
- 12 seconds later, the stairwell door opens and 20 IV people stealthly walk out into the lobby.
- Stephen Hop stares at them while all 20 try to slyly hide behind the colomn near the elevators.
- 5 secs later, both elevators open and 50 more people flood out of the elevators into the lobby; and seeing stephen in the lobby, they join the other 20 in forming a single file line to hide behind the column.
- Stephen finally leaves back to his apartment, i see zongwei and brian lin running into the south elevators.
- 6 seconds later, I see zongwei and brian lin running out of the north elevators to chase down stephen.

Happy Birthday Stephen!

Hah! We sure got him!

Hey! its not your birthday Michelle!

My photographer partner in crime.

Esther can't avoid both of our cameras!

sweats, they think theyre so cool. well one of them is :P

Me stalking the birthday boy on my way back to Terrace.

p.s, another reason i dont like using flash is that I only have 1 lens and with the filter on it, it is too long and leaves a shadow when i take pictures with flash.

p.p.s, I actually had a lot of homework to finish and for a little while I had thought of not going to this little surprise. But in the end I decided that Stephen has done a lot more for me this year than my homework ever did for me, so i went. And I'm glad I did! ..but now i gotta go finish that homework. Cya!

Open Gyming the night away.

Yesterday we were at open gym volleyball from 7:30pm to 12:00am. It was intents.

I started off playing king of the court with jacklyn. I love king of the court-- theres less pressure on me when i mess up, and theres less players on the court so its more of a 1v1 atmosphere (so i can show off ).

When it was our turn to play on the main court, our team consisted of 3 guys and 3 girls. Me shawn reed and ash, erin, jacklyn. Some people may think that having 3 girls was a disadvantage, but quite the contrary, we were dominating the night; the other teams were disadvantaged because we had these 3 girls on our team.

Strangely enough, I played middle the whole night since we did have 3 girls. It was wierd because out of the 3 guys, I am the shortest. Hopefully, however, I proved last night that I am only short in standing height. It was my first time actually hitting middle, but me and Reed established early on to set 1 and a halfs instead of regular 1's, so we were able to abuse their blockers.

Later on, some girls from the club team came and played. They are really good, and i want to go watch them play because it feels like the club team is getting alot of good players. I met a new girl, Megan. She plays rightside with Erin. I can't imagine how hard it would be to play against two rightsides as good as they are, its scary.

Somewhere along the night, me and charlie climbed on top of the doorway to the gym. Jacklyn took a pretty cool picture, and its funny to most people who come to open gym because that doorway is so familiar. I'm surprised no one has climbed it before.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3654094&id=668899131

p.s, I'm going to go watch the girls club team play this Friday on campus. Tell me if you wanna come watch their game! its at 6:00pm i think.

Stalker Compilation

The time is finally here! My long awaited stalker compilation is finished! I'm so glad im putting my 18-200mm lens to good use. Keep in mind that since I had to take these really quickly and on the spot, I didnt have much time to manual focus and set exposure options. Now lets get to the victims:

Lets start right off with the best one in my opinion.

Victim: Kristina

Vantage Point: My 9th floor window

I got really lucky with this one, I was taking a picture of my plant on the window sill and whatdya know, shes walking down with bat and all.

Victim: Rachelle

Vantage Point: Behind a Bookshelf

Victim: 2-in-1! Rachelle and Kristina

Vantage Point: Behind books in the library

Victim: Kyle

Vantage Point: My desk, while he was looking the other way

Victims are not only limited to students, TAs are fair game!

Victim: Paul Ogawa

Vantage Point: I hid my camera behind kristina's head.

Victim: Reed Bradley a.k.a Boo Radley

Vantage Point: Behind Aro

Victim: 2-in-1! Steven Chan and Jamie

Vantage Point: Behind Trees

Victim: Jacklyn Ginseng Lee

Vantage Point: its a Secret

I like your black sweater Jacky.

Victim: Joyce

Vantage Point: She was walking down bwalk like 10 feet in front of me when I saw her so I ran behind the gate at the LA tennis Center, somehow she didnt see me.

Victim: 3-in-1! Steven Chan, Josh, Josiah

Vantage Point: In the middle of Sproul Plaza

Muahaha, hope you got a laugh out of these. 

p.s, that wasn't creepy at all.

Avatar!

I finally watched Avatar this weekend!.. in 3D too, if i might add! The glasses made me really dizzy in the beginning and I repeatedly took them off, but as soon as the movie started, they were stuck on my face. The 3D graphics were amazing! It was nothing like the 3D movies Ive watched in the past where it was just a moving pop-up book and the images seemed like paper. This was real 3D, it had a sorta roundness and depth that made my eyes and brain cry with joy.

Though the story was a bit predictable, Avatar is among list of favorite movies to keep on my mind for when people ask me what my favorite movies are (Ratatouille, Ocean's 11, Avatar.. mm and Music and Lyrics to round out the list, you can laugh but i will still love that movie).

I found myself holding my breath many times during the movie, and finally when I realize I'm running out of air, I have to inhale slowly while avoiding making loud embarrassing sounds trying to gulp in air.

After the movie (and even after 3 days) I wanted to go out into a jungle and just run and jump around stuff. The new world with creatures and plants and things I've never seen before just jumpstarted my imagination. I really want a dragon kite creature, I wouldnt even ask for that big red one, I'd be happy with just one of those little ones. My mom calls it a kite creature cause it looks more like a kite to her than a dragon. My dad says he'd prefer one of those horse creatures rather than the kite creature. It never even crossed my mind to choose the horse creature over the dragon kite creature. --come on! FLYING, thats like my biggest dream ever.

I want to be a Navi!

Hahaha, I had fun with this one. 

p.s, its not running around in the jungle, but avatar has finally got me to start running again. im gonna start doing stairs tomorrow and work my way towards my goal of being able to dunk.

p.p.s, what would you chose? horse or flying dragon kite creature?

Finding Founder's Rock

o the deadly trio reunited again for another adventure around UCLA. This time we were equipped with long boards. Thank you Esther for letting me borrow your long board, it was so much fun. Thank you Kristina for carrying it all the way to boelter even though you didn't know if i was gonna come with you. Thank you Kristina and Steven for teaching me how to long board for the first time. Oh and Rachelle was with us for half the day. Sadly, I didnt have my camera, but fortunately for everyone, Rachelle let us borrow hers.

From eating plants, to climbing trees and posing on big rocks I had a strangely fun day after class on friday. Kristina texted me to invite me to go long boarding...

ah im soo busy with life right now, sorry ill finish this blog later. for now we will skip ahead to just a buncha pictures from friday's adventure:

steven did a really awesome job with this one. he literally made a good picture out of one from the dumps.