Man...

Such a shit week.
I feel depressed.

B.A.S.b.H.&T.

Looking Forward

You know what sucks?

My one goal for this school year is to FINISH.  Finish this damn school year and close my college career by the end of 2011.  The plan is to be a UCLA Graduate by the time 2012 comes around.  I've been stressing so so so much since last Spring quarter when I realized I didn't want to do a minor.  I kind of slacked last year because I thought I would take a full 5th year to complete my major and minor, but now that I don't have a minor, I want to just finish my major as soon as possible.  And the soonest I can finish is at the end of Fall 2011.  So I'm working and stressing my ass off to complete everything and be completely finished.  The light at the end of the tunnel is officially completing my major and accepting my degree.  It gives me hope and motivation while I stress and grow white hairs during this school year.

BUT

I hate hearing how all the recent grads say "Being a graduate sucks."  I can't wait for anything other than freedom from the stupid rules of college and a system that always seems to hold you back.  College was fun, but I've never had a more painful growing process in my life.  The fact that my motivation and hope is based on finishing, and that people can't stop telling me that they'd rather be in college is unsettling.

I JUST WANT TO BE DONE and GTFO!!

Cut to Free

Sometimes I wish I could just get a huge pair of scissors and free myself from everything I'm tied to.

Late Update

I am no longer a resident in Westwood, Los Angeles, CA. 
No more Apartment 317 on Ohio Ave. 
No more late night runs to Yoshinoya. 
No more random kick backs.
No easy ride back from school.
No more walking to Westwood Village to grab some grub.

I am officially a student commuter from home.

I definitely miss the apartment environment. 
But...

No more empty fridge.
No more sharing rooms, bathrooms, parking spaces.
No more coin-operated laundry.
No more shuttle.
No loud lady across the apartment that yells at us for being loud at 9pm but talks mothereffing loud at 3pm on her phone on her balcony.
No more Yoshinoya-dependency.

Pros and cons.
Feels good to be home though.
La Familia es mi vida.

Perks

One thing that I love about going to school at UCLA is that I won't have to say goodbye to this city once school ends.  School is in LA, home is in LA, church is in LA, life is in LA.  If you go to school far far away from home, how often will you be able to go back?  Yeah, it's cool to see other cities and live there, but LA's big enough for my lifetime.  Thanks Los Angeles.  I promise I'll try to love you as you have loved me.

Fire Alarm

Before every midterm, final, quiz I take at UCLA, I wish there'd be a HUGE fire burning causing the fire alarms to go off which causes the hazard sprinklers to engage, resulting in soggy papers previously known as our exams.  Then terrorists come and hold the professors and TA's as hostages, making me react compulsively, disarming the terrorists quickly and detaining the situation at hand.  Then the professors, as they get up soaked from the water and sweat from fear, thank me in the most sincere way.  And I say it's nothing because my heart is still pumping super fast and adrenaline is taking over my body.  Then I grab my pack, swing it around my shoulder, wink at the professor and say, "Thank YOU for an A, professor" and I walk out into the sunset as the professor watches me go, with an awestruck expression on his face.  Then I get an A and become a hero.

Super Duper

Last night, around 3 or 4 am, I came to a decisive conclusion:

I will be staying for 5th year.

Sigh, that just means another year of UCLA undergraduate studies, where anal engineers will compete in every way possible to screw me over.  Assholes....

Anyway, the decision was not based on whether or not I'd be able to finish up my courses for my major.  The reason I decided on my Civil Engineering major in high school was because I wanted to go into Environmental studies, more than structural or geotechnical.  The "easiest" AP class at Temple City was considered APES (Environmental Studies) and supposedly our school didn't too well on the AP test because the teacher was so lenient and easy.  I got a 4 without studying and I really enjoyed the coursework, which then made me realize that I wanted to go more into that field of engineering.

So now here I am at UCLA forced to take structural and the oh-so-disgusting geotechnical courses that I have to take in order to graduate with a Civil Eng. degree.  I always had an idea of what I wanted to concentrate in for my major (and what I didn't *cough piece-of-shit-geotechnical cough*), but now the answer is clear:  I will be graduating with a Civil Engineering degree from UCLA in 2012 with concentrations in Structural and Water Resources Engineering, along with an Environmental Engineering Minor.  

Sounds awesome huh?

So thank you Lord for providing me with another year of UCLA, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, Rose Bowl & Pauley Pavilion, Coach Neuheisel & Howland, and Westwood Village.  People probably aren't too happy about 5th year, but I'm all smiles.

All hail Westwood! (copyright Jay Chung)

Jan 4

The redemption quarter begins.

Damn It

Bad start to the school year.

Jay-Z Concert

My head is hurting.

People were smoking weed all around me and my crew, but it didn't matter. If it was going to enhance their concert experience, then more power to them. All I felt was joy and love all around me.

My already sore arms are killing me.

I could only be a slave to the commands of Jay-Z when he said "Bounce your arms like this!" I was bumping my hands, waving my shirt around my head, and throwing my arms from side to side in overflowing excitement.

My voice is gone.

Singing/screaming every Jay-Z lyrics I know was maybe a bad idea... hm... no way. Think about all the Jay-Z songs you know, and the lyrics you know to those songs. A lot huh? Losing my voice was so worth it.

My mind can't think straight.

I won't be able to recover from this epic concert. Seriously, I think I'm going to need a few days to recover and get over it. Every moment of that concert was just perfect. I was in my own world for those 4 hours.

$50 tickets,

being on the floor section ALL NIGHT,

seeing Jordan Farmar, Baron Davis, Jamie Foxx (he was literally less than 4 feet away from me) in the crowd,

watching J. Cole (seems legit) and Wale (freaking SICK end performance) open up,

being 10 yards away from Pharrell when he performed with N.E.R.D.,

and finally

just being able to experience a Jay-Z concert.

I will never ever ever be able to forget this concert.

I will forever throw the ROC in the sky.

The Blueprints, Reasonable Doubt, Life and Times, Black Album, Kingdom Come, every remix or song he was featured in... I have a newfound LOVE for Mr. Carter.

Blown away,

Charles

First Time

I've had all-nighters before tests before.

And I've also had non-all-nighters where I slept a couple hours right before my test.

But for this midterm, I started studying around 5pm, didn't stop until 5am, took a "nap", woke up at 10, now I'm back at the books again. The test is at 2pm, so I'll be in this exact same position until around 1pm. Today will be a glorious day.

And - I've become good friends with coffee. I like them black with two spoons of sugar. Similar to how I like my women....

jk.

My halmunee would kill me if I married a black girl.

Post-Rain

...weather is the best.

The scent the air has is CRISP.

The sun seems BRIGHTER than it should be.

The sky's color is a magnificent hue of BLUE.

Everything just feels so FRESH.

Unless the weather does a complete 180 and burns you at 90+ degrees the day after it rained. This weather is wacky, but I'll take anything over the rain.

Some random things I want to do:

- Discover some good music.

- Watch Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Where the Wild Things Are, Paranormal Activity

- Start consistently exercising. (The more I talk about it, the less guilty I feel.)

- Eat some good food around LA.

- Get some A's in my classes. HELL YEAH!

Taco Tuesday

My apartment-mates and I had our

FIRST, bi-weekly, TACO TUESDAY!!

ARRRRRIIIBBBAAAAA!!

Background story:

My mate, Michael, had his parents from SD bring us some food and goodies as they visited our apartment. The amount of food they brought was amazing. It put our refrigerator from almost-empty to FULLY STOCKED. Only if we had some honeys come like Mr. Chi City. We would've made him proud.

So Michael's parentals brought us a bunch of gogi's. We ate heartily for a couple of days, grilling and frying the meat to our liking. But even after the weekend, we had muchos gogi left (specifically Dweh-Ji-Bul-GoGi). So we hatched a plan to have TACO TUESDAY!

We made our own Kogi truck style Korean/Mexican fusion tacos with the bulgogi we had leftover and mixed it with some homemade salsa, onion, cilantro, and warm corn tortillas. The outcome was spectacular. The flavors were awesome, the work we put into it was not much at all, and we bumped some Hispanic-style music, all while enjoying the homemade goodness we produced with our own bare hands. It was an epic meal for Apartment 317.

We each had about 5-7 tacos, which was just awesome. I know you're waiting for pictures, but we're MEN. We don't show off/admire the looks of our meals. We enjoy the meal with our taste buds and palates.

Hahaha jk. I was just too hungry that I didn't care about photos.

All in all the experience was fun. It's hard to set up, but hopefully we'll be doing this again in two weeks.

See you all then.

Anger

I hate summer school.

Motehralkfjalkferkaeuckingapieceafljoafshaitaiajsltiahafausaskcingacockiasgjaslkfjasfmutaeheorhaslkfjcanslkfjsagansglkajfsaflasjflsgdlsj

Attachment

I just sold two of my old textbooks on Half.com.
Principles of Modern Chemistry
and University Physics.

Do you ever feel attached to something like textbooks? These are the things that made you soooo miserable, but also gave you a feeling of accomplishment once you finished the classes. They housed all the answers in the course, but you just had to find them. These are the things that filled your brain with information, that helped you become a little bit smarter with every sentence you read. Selling and getting rid of these books wouldn't be fair, right? Especially since they helped so much through some of the hardest classes ever taken....


YEAH RIGHT!
The $150 are gonna be looking REEEEEEEAL nice in my bank account!
NO MORE CHEM
NO MORE PHYSICS

WOOOO HOOOOOOOOO

$150 richer,
-c.k.

Finals Week

Last Finals week of Sophomore year!

I've been surprisingly very relaxed and in a good mood this entire week. I don't feel stressed, I'm happy, and I've been sleeping plenty. I'm not sure how the test taking has been going.... but I'm happy nonetheless!!

It's strange to be in a non-negative mood during the worst week of the quarter.
Maybe it's because of new things happening in life.
Maybe it's because of my apartment mates and I signing our lease.
Maybe it's because summer is so damn close.
Maybe it's because of family time during Finals.

My professor summed it up the best, as he gave us a word of encouragement before his Final:

"The outcome of this test does NOT affect the rest of my life"

Very well said Professor Winter.
So to all of you who are stressing and being a Negative Nancy, remember that the outcome of one Final will not determine the rest of your life.

Have fun guys!