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!