Ok, I totally cheated since I didn’t post yesterday, but I can’t help but keep up an entry per day (even if it’s a little late). Friday night I was pretty tired and crashed really early. What started off as a nap became sleep and by the time I got up this morning, I had too much stuff to do. First I spent about an hour setting up my new phone, then I took a shower and it was off to my microdermabrasion appointment. It was a pretty interesting experience and though I can’t be sure for another day or two, I think it changed my skin enough for it to be worth another treatment.
After that, it was off to the Hacienda Heights/Rowland Heights/Walnut/Diamond Bar area to have lunch with friends, which was quite yummy and filling. The rest of the afternoon was spent at SpeedZone, where we a good three hours putting through an 18-hole mini golf course. The last time I had gone mini golfing was in 2nd grade and I don’t have a knack for this particular sport, so I didn’t do so well. But we had a lot of fun nonetheless!
From there, it was back to Westwood to pick up Houdini for dinner. We had a nice meal, then went to visit another friend and had a good chat for about 2 hours. Back in the room, we ended up chatting with The Legend and his friend for quite awhile before getting called away at midnight for a friend’s birthday surprise. Maybe half an hour later, Panda finally got around to starting to pack up the room, which we had meant to start on about 4 hours earlier. Oh well, it was a good day with a lot of friends! Then tomorrow we’re rounding up the troops for a massive dim sum get-together, which will be pretty epic. :)
One of my coworkers has been working hard to renovate his yard into the ultimate spot to hang out and throw some parties. It was finally ready for its official unveiling today and he held a day-long party to celebrate! I moseyed over around six and quickly fell into conversation after conversation. My original plan of just stopping by for an hour or so soon dissolved and I settled in for hours of chillaxin’. With a jacuzzi, bonfire pit, sand beneath your feet, ocean breeze swirling around, and wall projector, what more could you ask for? This picture doesn’t do the place justice.
Between all the fun chatting and hanging out with some newly-made buddies, I took a detour to two guys’ apartments so they could change into something warmer for nighttime in the beach community. Seeing these three places so close to the beach makes it a really appealing place to be. Who doesn’t enjoy an ocean view? I think I’d live a much more active lifestyle if I was right there. It would make me want to walk around more.
I happened to have my Acu Hoop in the car, which is a 3-lb hula hoop meant for working out with. Many tried, but few could master the moves it takes to use one of those suckers. It was hilarious to see people try though! Sure made for quite the entertainment when they’d try all sorts of hip wiggles and pelvic thrusts to keep it going. Unfortunately, those motions don’t work very well for keeping such a heavy hula hoop going. All you need to do is stand straight and move a little side to side. I tried to teach a few, but they all attempted to move around too much. Oh well, it was great entertainment!
I was one of the only girls there, which is quite reminiscent of my work environment, where I am currently the only girl. It’s always an interesting dynamic, where I am either often the center of attention or pretty much ignored. Today was much more of the former than I’ve had in awhile, and it was interesting. I had a lot of fun even when I was teased, hassled, or otherwise talked about. Boys will be boys, as I’ve learned. These guys certainly knew how to have a lot of fun though and that brought out the bubbly side of me, which was great. I haven’t been in situations like that lately, where I can be the sociable person I am in gatherings like today’s. I enjoyed getting out and meeting new people while enjoying a really great part of LA.
I’ve been noticing a lot of people who look like people I know. Most recently is Steve Nash (Panda’s had basketball running every day, so this guy kept showing up), who looks like one of my former roommate’s boyfriend! Or perhaps it is the other way around. Nash, after all, is older. And on an unrelated side note, every time I hear Nash I can’t help but think John Nash, the mathematician. But back to lookalikes, when Yeardley Love, a college senior from University of Virginia was murdered, the picture of her they used in the news reminded me of a high school classmate. A few months ago, I went to a concert with Panda and the second chair celloist looked just like a futuristic version of a middle and high school friend from New York!
Thanks to mobile technology, when I noticed that lady, I pulled out my phone and got on Facebook to find a picture to show Panda. Indeed, he agreed, she did look like my friend if she was only 20-30 years younger. I also used Facebook to find pictures of my other friends with lookalikes in the news and perhaps Panda is just humoring me, but he nodded that they did resemble the person of interest. Is it just that when you see enough people in your life, you will inevitably come across those who look eerily similar? Or maybe it’s just the way I am, looking for patterns and similarities. But I really do think they look like they could have been the same person. I’d share the side-by-side comparisons for you to judge yourself, but I don’t want to violate their privacy.
Tonight was my first time going to Spring Sing in Pauley Pavilion and it was a really fun experience. The one thing I love about being indoors is that I won’t get cold! So tonight I could really focus on the performances at hand. Also, I went with Panda and Houdini and some other friends I haven’t seen in a long time, which made it very enjoyable too. Now what really struck me about the night, as I was watching all the great entertainment that Company (the crew that does the comedic skits between all the acts) does, was how much I will miss some of my Bruin moments.
A lot of what they do is inspired by making parodies of what life on campus is like for students and there are more than your fair share of inside jokes. I haven’t been away long enough to really miss college, but hearing about swiping into the dining halls and the crazy squirrels reminded me of the fond memories I’d created along the way. There was one joke about passing out a book called “Wild Animals” on Bruinwalk that I didn’t get because it came about after I left. I’m going to be sad when more and more of those references begin to slip by me as I get outdated. Thankfully, there will always be our staple jokes about Trojans and North vs. South campus and Bruinwalk. I’m starting to miss the good old times, when I was one of those “in” students who understood everything.
It’s that time of year again! This weekend was the LA Times Festival of Books and I went with some friends. This year they had a mobile scavenger hunt with the prize of an iPad. Panda and I decided to participate and we invited our friend, Houdini, to join in. Saturday, Houdini and I spent a good 4-5 hours running around the UCLA campus answering clues to the hunt. I unfortunately took a hit when I got a question wrong, but that allowed Houdini to get a perfect score on the hunt… let’s just hope he gets enough bonus points for pictures to outdo the competition! That’d be awesome, considering it’s his first time to the fair!
The focus this year really centered around the scavenger hunt, which was really a nice way to check out most parts of the event. From the poetry corner to the kids’ stuff to the cooking stage to the news booths, we saw a lot! It was also nice to get out on such a beautiful weekend rather than lazing around all day like I usually would. I do need to get (and stay) more active and though my back hurt and my legs were aching after the first day, it felt good to be outside moving around. I also ran into some random people, which is always fun.
I found that this year I didn’t really have an interest in checking out the booths like I have in previous years. Perhaps it is because there were so many people there that anything I might have wanted to do would have taken up a lot of time standing in line. Plus, I wasn’t out to buy anything, so none of those booths interested me, and I’ve never been one for book signings or readings or cooking shows. It’s nice to just hang out and enjoy the atmosphere and catch bits of performances as I pass.
It has found a nice home over the fireplace.
Oh, and then today we got word that Houdini won the iPad from a raffle we entered on Saturday! Pretty awesome, especially considering we were really donating money to help homeless people when we bought those tickets. I remember seeing it was a 32 gig one, which is better than the one the LA Times has up for grabs from the scavenger hunt! That one seems out of our reach though. And as Panda and I were going through completing the hunt for him today, we were able to snag a really nice poster and a button, which was great for him since he has empty walls to fill and collects buttons. :) All in all a great weekend, no? If only I could have won that iPad so I could feel better about the iPod Touches that I no longer own… :-P
Yesterday my friend and I tried to go eat at a restaurant half an hour before its closing time, only to be turned away because they close the kitchen an hour early. What?!?! That is ridiculous. Most meals only last about 40 minutes or so. I absolutely hate when restaurants stop serving food way before closing time. I once ran down to a place I wanted to eat at and made it 20 minutes before they were supposed to close, only to have the doors pretty much shut in my face. And here I thought restaurants would want to maximize the amount of customers they serve, but I guess going home is far more important.
What really bothers me about this is that it’s so misleading. Do I always have to plan on showing up at least an hour before the listed closing time, even if I only plan on a quick meal? In last night’s case, we even called at 10:15 and asked when they close that night – they told us 11. Why didn’t they bother to tell us that, oh by the way, the kitchen is closed?! It’s not like we were asking when they usually close. We asked when they were closing that night. Hint, hint, we wanted to eat there TONIGHT. Those hours of operation are unreliable.
I think there should be legislation that forces restaurants to list their opening hours as when they stop serving new customers (and listing when they actually kick the customers out of their shop would be optional). After all, we’re going there to eat, don’t we have a right to know at what time we won’t be able to do so anymore? Restaurants should not get away with tricking people into thinking they’re open far more than they actually are. It’s like this one boba place that I’ve heard doesn’t even serve boba until at least half an hour after opening. They should have to note that on the door with their opening times! After all, much of the draw of their store is the boba. People don’t just go to get any old drink; they could do that somewhere else that’s probably open earlier anyway.
So if you ever open a restaurant, please take it upon yourself to do the responsible thing and let people know if your food isn’t served until half an hour after your doors open or if it is no longer served an hour before your doors close. It’s vital information that’s typically far more relevant than when those doors lock and unlock. Thanks.
At UCLA, students like to de-stress during finals by doing some silly things, like Midnight Yell and Undie Run. In case you feel like you’re missing out on the fun, here is a look at what it’s like to be a part of the Wednesday night tradition that grew so big it was banned. It would have been tonight (and I know a small group still showed up to do it – we’ll see how that went down when the Daily Bruin comes out tomorrow).
To start, there is a lot of cheering, singing, screaming, and all-around joy.
At the stroke of midnight, the crowd begins to move, hollering at the top of their lungs. Note the traffic lights that have been disabled – police took measures to ensure motor vehicles stay away from pedestrians overtaking the roads.
In the recent year or so, the route of Undie Run was changed to go through this tunnel, which actually makes it quite fun since it’s so thunderous in there.
The last “legal” Undie Run was re-routed once again so that it ended not by Powell Library and Shapiro Fountain, but on the IM field, where there were plenty of lighting and spectators, including this helo!
All in all, a great celebration that gives students a relatively innocent outlet for the intense studying that had taken over their lives for the past week or two. It’s a pity the university wasn’t willing to work out another revision to allow it to continue. I’m sure the students will continue to fight for it, until they either get it back or find a new way of letting out their tension.
As I was getting lunch at Kaya today, I noticed their chopsticks resemble the pair I have in my To-Go Ware set. It reminded me of the day when Panda saw them and asked me why they were warped. Months later, when another friend came back from grad school in the East Coast, he saw them and asked the exact same thing. -____- Whereas I and our other friend, a history major, saw them as artistic, they saw them as warped. Wow. A lesson in the differences between North and South campus majors!
See the gentle curving to give them more character?
At UCLA, North campus houses most of the humanities and social sciences and South campus houses most of the life sciences and physical sciences. The School of Theater, Film, and Television is as north as you can get, while the School of Engineering is in the southern half. We often joke about this separation, but in this case, there truly is a disparity between the way we interpret things. North campus majors recognize the beauty and elegance of a twisted shape; South campus majors recognize a purposeless deformation. Ultimately, we’re looking at the same thing, but our differing opinions of the chopsticks’ design would easily lead to a scenario where I buy them, only to have Panda return them as he wondered why I bought them at all. It’s funny, isn’t it, how differently we view the world?
My philosophy is simple: things change. Therefore, we are all on a lifelong journey of discovery. We should be flexible, questioning, learning, adapting, and growing. Always.
little fat notebook pays homage to Mead's "fat lil' notebooks" that I use to write down any thoughts that strike me throughout the day. I keep one by my side at all times. After all, inspiration waits for no one.
