Posts Tagged ‘memories’

Gettin’ in the Bruin spirit

laelene Posted in video blog,Tags: , , , , , ,
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I love my alma mater. This is how we get into the spirit for sports games:

1. Get pumped up listening to the UCLA Bruins Marching Band.

how far we’ve come, bruin style from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

2. Go to the Rose Bowl and be entertained as Red Bull parachuters wind their way down from the sky.

redbull parachuters from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

3. Cheer your team to touchdowns (and dance along with Joe and Josie Bruin).

ucla touchdown from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

4. Enjoy a lovely halftime show, including a showdown between some young’uns.

little footballers from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

5. Celebrate a victory where the lights of the Rose Bowl are turned off just so we can do an 8-clap in the dark.

rose bowl dark from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

6. Round off the night with a firework show!

rose bowl fireworks from Mary Qin on Vimeo.

My dreams of being a school bus driver

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , ,
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When I was young, I wanted to be a number of unusual things.  While other children were aspiring to be doctors, lawyers, artists, dancers, or some form of celebrity, I once had it in my mind that I wanted to be a school bus driver.  You see, I always had a penchant for sharing candy and snacks with my friends and I figured there was no better job that allowed you to give candy to kids than that of a school bus driver.  I wouldn’t have to deal with teaching and grading like teachers do, I wouldn’t have to clean up after messy kids like janitors do, and I wouldn’t have to deal with strange cafeteria food like the servers do.  All I’d have to do is pick students up in the morning and drop them off at night.  Meanwhile, I could have a lovely stash of treats that I’d give out for holidays and in certain special times like first and last day of school.

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher had an entire drawer of delicious candy.  When we got homework assignments and tests back, we’d find nickels, dimes, and quarters stamped at the top of our page.  Depending on how well we did for that assignment or test, we would find different increments of change stamped on.  We would  then tear off the stamped image and keep it in a bag or pencil case.  Then, one glorious day, Mrs. S would open up her fabulous drawer and allow us to “buy” the candy within.  Though I thought that would be fun to do, I didn’t like the other aspects of the job, like controlling unruly young kids and patiently teaching them a variety of subjects.  So, I decided that I would rather be the like school bus driver, who would give us candy on Valentine’s Day or for the winter holidays.  It’s all the fun without the grunt work!

Holiday spelling

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poinsettiaPoinsettia.  A word I always dreaded come Christmastime as a child.  I distinctly remember in first grade when we were learning holiday-themed words in class to be tested on and I always struggled with poinsettia.  Christmas was fine, Santa Claus and reindeer and wreath and holly were all too, but poinsettia – that dreaded flower!  I mean, they’re nice enough to look at and all, but really, who came up with that name?!  Was it in their agenda to make my childhood December uncomfortable and awkward?  If so, they were quite successful.

I’ve always prided myself in being an excellent speller.  Not the best, but enough to win the spelling bee in my second grade class with the word chimney.  Though I wasn’t able to win the overall school competition, I wasn’t that crushed – I never expected to be a prodigy or genius of any sort.  I was just a natural at spelling, that’s all.  But oooh when I had to spell POINSETTIA the year before, I lost some of my confidence.  Perhaps it was because I always had it in my mind that it was “poinsetta” (and thus always got docked on my quiz).  In retrospect, it seems such a silly little thing that I should have been able to pick up easily enough, but then again it’s been 16 years since those days.

I guess I’ve learned something since then.  😛

P.S. – Happy 50th to my mommy!  🙂  As I told her, halfway there.  😉

iFiddle

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Whoa, I can't believe they've actually branded this!

Whoa, I can't believe they've actually branded this!

About a year and a half ago, when I was living my final year on campus, I had a spectacular roommate who was an amazing musician (among many other things).  I had written a little post-it to myself that I stuck on my desk and one of our friends came in and read it: “I fiddle.”  Somehow, from there, Ms. Mariachi got the impression that there was a new product on the market called an iFiddle (must be her musical background).  The friend and I then proceeded to tell her this story:

Apple is coming out with a new product modeled after a real fiddle, which you can hold just like one, but instead of having strings, it has sensors that recognize when your bow and fingers are on it.  It can then play notes just like you would normally, but the great thing is you can connect your iFiddle to your computer and play background music to accompany your notes, or choose to have them transcribed into a composition as you play!  They’re coming out with a whole line of other instruments you can play with it as well, so you can get really creative with the pieces you compose.  You can also hook it up to your iPod to play back pieces you were working on, or use a song you have on there as the accompaniment for your work.  Then through iTunes, you can edit your compositions and share them as new songs…

We had this whole elaborate story going, both of us building off the other’s inventive descriptions until we got to a point where we just couldn’t contain ourselves anymore.  We burst into hysterical laughter that Mariachi had completely fallen for our ruse, which was neither planned nor rehearsed.  In fact, it was completely spontaneous and neither of us had a clue as to where it was going as we spoke!  That’s the beauty of improv!  And all the better that she believed us through and through, and was excited that such a product was coming out.  Just gotta love the random moments you have with your friends.  I just wish I could remember more of the fabulous details we were able to think up on the fly so that you could truly appreciate our brilliance that night.  😉

Residential life

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canyon point

A lovely neighborhood to spend your undergraduate years in. 🙂


I lived on campus at university for four years, three at UCLA and one at York.  Though at times I felt a little old, I never regretted it and I’m really glad that I had the foresight to do so.  After all, apartment life is plentiful after graduating, but dorm life is limited to those few years.  Or should I say, residential life?  The Office of Residential life was always very picky about what words they used to describe things: residence hall, rather than dormitory; learning center, rather than computer lab; dining halls or boutique eateries, rather than cafeterias or restaurants.  It’s true enough, the words you use do carry a certain connotation, so residential life it is.  Sounds more homey, doesn’t it?  Exactly the point.

So anyway, I loved the residential life experience mainly because of its openness.  Where else can you keep your door open whenever you’re in, say hi to your neighbors for no good reason without getting weird looks, and hang out in the hallways and lounges for fun?  Everyone is free to be wherever they want, whenever they want and they’re not judged for it.  Imagine laying around in the hallway of an apartment complex.  It just feels wrong.  Yet doing so in the middle of the night in the res halls was perfectly normal (and could even make you some new friends).

Pow wows in the hallway... not so much uncommon.

Pow wows in the hallway... not so much uncommon.


People feel safer and are more trusting in an environment where everyone is the same.  We’re all just students, barely adults, all new to the place and finding our way in life.  It’s great to have the freedom to sleep whenever we want, eat (nearly) whatever we want whenever we want, and socialize however we want.  It also helps that we have food available to us from about 7 AM to 2 AM every day!  We don’t have to worry about cooking our own food and a delicious meal is but a card swipe away.  That also makes it much more conducive for people to socialize over shared food.  I really do think there is no better uniter than a good meal.  In fact, I do most of my socializing with some sort of nourishment, whether it’s a meal, dessert run, or just a drink.

Bruin Cafe is a popular place for students to get grub!

Bruin Cafe is a popular place for students to get grub! photo credit: ASiUU on flickr


Besides all of that, being in college in general is just great.  Thousands of students of (generally) similar caliber are alongside you, everyone learning amazing things in their respective majors.  Most have no idea what they’re going to accomplish in their lives and have a world of possibilities ahead of them.  For many, it’s the first time they’ve lived away from home and get to experience the freedom to schedule their lives however they like.  There’s a great energy in the air in residential halls, which are bustling with life anywhere from 8 AM to 2 AM.  And there certainly is no other place like it on earth.  Especially none quite like UCLA on-campus living!

Legos, a mind challenge

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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legos

photo credit: tantek.com

I believe that Legos are one of the best toys that people (particularly kids) can play with.  They’re so wonderfully simple, yet combined together can be amazingly complex.  Kind of like how life works – you have all these microscopic cells that combine to create life.  The sum of the parts is greater than the whole, right?  When you start putting a lot of things together, it’s not as simple as addition – it’s more like multiplication, where things get more and more complex as there are more units of whatever that are interacting with each other.

Now Legos don’t get quite so complicated, but they certainly do lend themselves to an endless variety of structures!  Using these little building blocks, you can make robots and houses and animals and faces.  Really, whatever you are creative enough to conjure up in your imagination, you can find a way to represent it using Legos.  I love that they’re very plain and the beauty that arises from them can only be got through creative thinking.  It encourages people to think.

See, you’ve got these parameters.  You only have square and rectangular blocks.  They can only stack on each other.  The fewer circles you overlap to put them together, the less stable that connection.  There are only a handful of generally primary colors to work with.  That’s pretty much it.  Then you’re let loose into a world full of designs that can fill up your head.  These are the kind of toys that challenge kids while making it fun.  That’s why I believe in the earliest versions of these lovely toys.  The crazy designs that have come out since then take the creative fun out of the user’s side and puts it into the manufacturer’s side.  Now it’s people who work for the company that come up with cool things and shapes are made to fit that.  Not as exciting as finding out how to make something look like that with the given (limited) resources.  It has become more about aesthetic appeal than mental appeal now.

However, I will say that those new designs can still teach kids something.  I’ve often self-taught myself skills and I find that when that happens, you lose out on the “tricks of the trade.”  So rather than having to figure it out yourself, if you first follow instructions and build exactly what is mapped out for you, you can learn the methodologies behind how to create such a thing.  I can imagine if you got one of those pre-designed versions of Legos and tried to build it just by looking at the end result, you’d find yourself with pieces in the wrong place, missing pieces, or leftover pieces.  If you take that first time as a process-learning experience, then take that and start making your own things from that structural knowledge, I’d say that was still time and money well-spent.  I’m just afraid that nothing will be learned, except how to read and follow instructions.

Besides, there’s nothing quite like the mindless fun of putting blocks together without the pressure of creating something beautiful.  With plain blocks, there’s that freedom.  With strange ones that are meant to be something else, it’s not as fun to mess around and let your mind wander.  You never know what you may come up with and what you can learn in the process!

Our tradition

laelene Posted in photo blog,Tags: , , , , ,
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The routine we generally follow whenever we get to see each other.

Step one: take pictures of each other.

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Step two: take pictures together!

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Standard "in the car" shot.

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The more challenging vertical shot.

Step three: take pictures of the food.

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Step four: do something non-food related and take pictures!

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Yup, our lives revolve around food, photos, and fun.  Don’t be jealous.  😉

When time stands still

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Just like old times, taking self-portraits in the car.

Just like old times, taking self-portraits in the car.

I got a chance to hang out with Katana yesterday and it never ceases to amaze me how each time we see each other, I don’t feel like she’s been gone for that long.  The last time I saw her was sometime during Christmas break a good nine months ago, but it’s easy for us to fall right back into an old pattern, an old routine.  I guess this is kind of how I live my life, since the same thing happens when my parents and I are reunited, and last month when I finally came back to LA and saw Panda again.  In each case, the time we spent apart doesn’t seem so long because of the ease in which we slip back into familiar territory.  Sure, a lot has changed, but fundamentally, we’re still the same.

It’s weird to think about Katana and Elle, who were the two best friends I had from my high school years at Valencia.  Ever since Katana and I graduated, with her going off to VMI, then NMMI, and I going off to UCLA, the three of us have only gotten to hang out sporadically, whenever it happened to work out.  Usually that meant about once or twice a year, particularly the over the holidays and/or during another one of our seasonal breaks.  And though interactions were few and far between, we were still the Asian girls who stood out and didn’t quite fit into the mould of what people expected girls, especially Asian girls, to be.  I guess that’s what ties us together in the end – this common way of life that leads us from “normal” girl activities to things like JROTC, where we met, or to be particularly outspoken about some feminist beliefs.

Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve known these two ladies for nearly 7 years now!  I haven’t ever known and stayed in contact with someone for that long.  Being that I moved every 3-4 years, that’s not too surprising.  For the first time in my life though, I’m going back to old friends again and again.  They are no longer memories to be stored away in a compartment labeled based on what city I knew them from.  Now they are a consistent prescense in my life, however fleeting that may be.  So I guess this is shocking to me because I don’t know what it’s like to have lifelong friends.  Do they all fare so well seeing each other so infrequently?  No matter where we are, whether it’s spread across three states in the US (like we are now), or spread across countries (as we’ve often been), I don’t need to see or even talk to these girls to know they will be there.  It’s kind of like family.

A picture is also like a moment frozen in time...  photo credit: _Mike_Howard_ on flickr

A picture is also like a moment frozen in time... photo credit: _Mike_Howard_ on flickr

Speaking of family, mine is also a very scattered one, with me seeing my relatives something like seven times over my lifetime and seeing my parents twice a year on average.  And though we’ve all grown a lot these two decades, I still think of my parents as 35-year-olds and honestly, only when I look closely do I realize they’re not anymore.  But in my head, there’s a semi-frozen image of my family members – my cousins are still budding young adults, my parents quite young, and my grandparents still sprightly.  Sure, we’ve added a few new members since then, but they kind of just get tacked on without the others gaining much in age.  I don’t know how it works in my mind, but that’s how I recall my closest kin.  Every time I see them again, even after four years away and so much that happened in between, I remember a lot of my childhood and the main processes remain unchanged.  I still get spoiled and stay with the same people and generally do and eat the same things.

Even for my parents, the few weeks I see them out of the year doesn’t seem so odd because those memories last me a long time.  I’ve got so much other stuff going on while I’m on my own that just touching base with them semi-annually is plenty to work from.  It does get lonely in the house sometimes when I’m the only one, but I’m used to solitude.  That was much like how our household functions anyway.  Besides, at my age, it’s time to be moving out and doing things on my own.  Much as I adore my house, Valencia is not really the place to jump start a career.  I’d rather be in Westwood or Santa Monica, or somewhere more central to the hubbub of LA.

Finally, the day that I came back after months away in Singapore, I was nervous to see Panda again.  It was our first time being apart since things really got started and it was certainly not a short period of time to cope with.  Even now I wonder how we managed, because not seeing him for a day can make me antsy.  I was glad that we fell pretty quickly back into a comfortable rhythm, working out our schedules around challenges, as we’ve always done.  I had been afraid that it would take some time to warm up again and that we may almost be like strangers for a bit, but that didn’t last very long.  Once again, time altered its flow for me (well, at least to my perception it did) and it was like a fraction of the time had actually passed.  I guess that’s what happens with people you care about.  Katana said it best: we have changed enough to have things to talk about, but haven’t changed so much that we don’t connect anymore.

The death of a tradition

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IMG_3612UCLA is rich in its culture and full of traditions.  One such (relatively new) one is the ever-lively Undie Run.  By the time I arrived on campus in the fall of 2004, it was a blossoming tradition that I had heard of, but didn’t really know much about.  I spent my first year hearing the rumors, but not knowing anyone to go with or where to find the gathering, I never tried to join in the festivities.  My second year I returned, eager to find my place and I did so by joining over a dozen organizations on campus.  As I spent my time going from meeting to meeting, social to workshop, I didn’t quite find the bonds I was looking for.  And so in the spring, I opted to pledge for Alpha Kappa Psi, a co-ed business fraternity on campus.  My time was sucked up by that, but I still managed to meet some new friends who were the type to party it up.  In them I found Undie Run enthusiasts, so I prepared myself for my very first participation in such an event.

Blocking off the road.

Blocking off the road.

Undie Run started back in 2002, when some guys who were frustrated by the tight control around finals week, with people not allowed to loiter or participate in Midnight Yell and other such things that restless college students are bound to gravitate towards.  As the quarters went by, it grew exponentially and soon thousands of students would gather together on the Wednesday night of Finals Week, then head off at midnight in a herd of skimpy outfits, going along a route that ultimately led to campus.  It was a great way for students to do something just to let loose a little bit in the midst of the stress that intense studying brings (or for the lucky few, celebrate the end of another quarter).  Once word got around and it grew big enough, the police started to block off the roads and monitor the path to ensure everyone’s safety (what would you do if you were driving just after midnight and a hoard of half-naked 20-somethings were running toward you, completely blocking the road?).  As it become more popular, it began to attract random people from the neighboring areas and even other schools, who would line the route and observe the madness pass before them.

IMG_0389For my first time, in the spring of 2006, I got some cute frilly underwear (black with pink hearts and completely useless as normal underwear with way too much poof) from Urban Outfitters on 3rd street and wore a plain black bra.  We congregated at the bottom of what was known as “Rape Trail” (now Saxon Trail/Steps), right on the road where Landfair meets Gayley.  The closeness of the crowd provided warmth in the cool night as we got ready for our journey.  At some point, the front part of the group began to to scream and run and we all followed suit, flying down Gayley, passing through De Neve Court, continuing down Bruinwalk, then up Bruinwalk, and making our way to the destination at the fountain in front of Powell Library.  (Yes, we like to run scantily-clad and scream and sing right outside the library where students are still studying for finals.)  Along the way, some creepy guys were standing around just staring and a few more were waiting at the end of the run.  There’s always a bit of a downside to everything, right?  Some were taking pictures and video and others were just scanning the crowd.

Splashing around!

Splashing around!

At Shapiro Fountain, we found that somebody had soaped it up before we arrived, so many of us gleefully jumped into the sudsy water and splashed around.  It was warm and slippery and messy and exhilarating all at once!  A few ambitious students managed to climb the trees flanking the fountain while others were hoisted onto their friends’ shoulders for a better view.  It was a scene of blissful mayhem and certainly bizarre to the unsuspecting soul.  Many people in the library paused their studies to come get a glimpse of those brave/insane enough to make it out that night.  There were all kinds of odd costumes and even a few socks-only guys running around, making us seem like some wacky mix between Halloween and Mardi Gras.  In the other runs I did, I saw a girl with pasties and another with a scarf as the only thing covering her top half.  There were a variety of thongs and TMI moments that just added to the hilarity of the event.

Wheeeee!  Fly down that hill!

Wheeeee! Fly down that hill!

We spent a good half hour to hour prancing around that space, dancing to the music provided by those creative enough to bring instruments to play.  Conga lines formed and dispersed and LOTS of pictures were taken.  At some point the police decided that we had had enough fun and began to chase us off, driving towards us and flashing their lights so we’d get moving.  The crowd would reluctantly begin to make its way back to the res halls and apartments on the other side of campus.  Sometimes we would take a pause on the rolling hills by Janss Steps, playing in the grass.  When I went with another group two years later, we did cartwheels and made human pyramids for quite awhile, before rolling down the hill.  Cooling down and calming down, we’d make our way back to the Hill, where much of the population would get Bruin Cafe to eat.  The rest of the crowds disappeared into the apartment area, possibly to continue their drinking, possibly to chill and rest.  Quite a few went right back to studying for a final at 8 AM!

Herding us off.

Herding us off.

Alas, all those good memories came to an end for me just before the university decided to end this de-stressing adrenaline rush.  Due to damage to university property that always seems to happen along with the event (hey, with 10,000 people trampling around, it’s bound to happen), as well as concerns over safety from the increasing numbers of visitors unaffiliated with UCLA who show up on those nights.  I’m sad to hear this decision, since it was always a hilariously fun event for me, though I kind of saw it coming with the route changes they kept making and the tighter and tighter restrictions imposed.  The university has been threatening to shut the operation down for a long time now and I guess it finally plucked up the courage.  But as the founders of the tradition say, the police can’t arrest you for running around in your underwear at night unless you are vandalizing property or being a public (usually drunk) nuisance.  So perhaps they will be forced to allow Undie Run to persist in some fashion or another, because if they don’t work with the students, they will just find another way.  Only time will tell now.

The “foreign stamp”

laelene Posted in general blog,Tags: , , , ,
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How do people decide what language to start speaking to me in?  I’m really curious because I get English about 80% of the time, Cantonese 15% of the time, and Mandarin 5% of the time.  The only Mandarin I hear is from mainlanders who don’t know Cantonese and about 95% of the Cantonese I hear comes from average locals.  However, nearly all of the service people I’ve run into have spoken to me in English before I ever open my mouth.  This goes for ticketers, waiters and waitresses, and even the people selling their goods at the market.  Basically anyone with extensive experience dealing with tourists can easily tell I have a Western background, pretty much immediately.

So the question is, how?  I still can’t figure it out.  Is it the way I dress?  The way I walk?  The way I… you know, I really can’t think of any other reasons.  Whatever it is, I must have it blazing across my forehead, screaming something like: “I’m not really Asian!”  The accuracy with which these people do it is pretty amazing at times.  At first I thought that maybe it was just their general approach to strangers, but I was standing in line and the two girls in front of me each got a “xie xie” (thank you in Mandarin) whereas I got a “thank you” upon passing.  Is it because my hair is not permed?  (Those girls both had wavy-ish hair that is a light brown, much like so many others.)  Then I thought maybe it was because I had my map out sometimes, but there are plenty of visitors from both Chinese and English-speaking areas, so that shouldn’t distinguish me.

I remember the same phenomenon happened when I went back to China as a kid.  I was told that the way I held myself was different.  I wonder if the same holds in Hong Kong, so many years later.  Do I still walk with too much confidence?  Is my skin still too tan?  (I’m the palest I’ve been in the past decade!)  What am I doing to exude this Western air?!  It’s still a mystery to me, and maybe it always will be.

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