Door closed.

I guess it’s pretty apparant that I’ve grown moody and easily irritated the past day or two. With closed doors, I sit here alone in the room. It’s expected that I would have some peace and quiet for myself, but rather I am accompanied by noise in the lounge as floormates play Scatagories (which I was not invited to, but no matter), neighboring rooms chatting and blasting on music, and the racket from outside. Starting early on homework is not really working out, and the annoying noise from everywhere is only making things worse.

School has only started for a week but I’m quickly bombarded with conflicts on my schedule and competition among students for a job during this falling economy while I grasp hopelessly to my sanity. I have grown this mentality that people are inconsiderate in many ways and of course biased that leads to quick assumptions and dumb questions. There were many instances when I question myself if the words that I compute in my head is not coming out the right way from my mouth, because I feel as though the attentively “listener” is only mindlessly nodding and throwing one word in one ear and out the other. Perhaps I’m being too vague.

As for the digital SLR decision, I guess I’m going to stick to the Canon Rebel; though I heard that a new model came out. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that I do get the job at the library that I was interviewed for on the spot yesterday. I was quite unready for the interview, since the manager of the library interviewed me and asked me a numerous amount of specific questions. Although at the same time I feel a bit confident that I did a decent job for a first interview considering I answered readily without a pause. The only problem that I’m worrying about is that I was a bit redundant with words such as “accommodating” and the “community.” If I don’t get the email by Wednesday, then it is probably likely that I won’t be offered the job.

It’s scary how competitive it is to receive only a library job on this campus. Eric mentioned that it took about three days for a job offer to be filled up with interviewers. Currently, job offers are down in less than 24 hours. Well, technically less than 9 hours since the student library job office is only open for certain hours. Every time I come and visit the job postings, I witness at least two people either sitting on the floor or standing patiently for the pounce. I even recalled this one girl was sitting on the floor for a while and right after she saw me turn in my application, she immediately stood up and applied right after me.  In the end, I was still the first to be interviewed (ha!) but I’m sure there were more candidates for the job. I surely hope I do get a reply soon. If not, then my hopes of getting a digital SLR is not likely.

I want late night.

The wait is finally over.

My winter break is about to end. Hurray!

As much as I dearly love to clean the dishes, cook four plates of food three days a week, rush to downtown back and forth each afternoon, and work countless of unpredictable, late hours with my mom, I think I can easily adjust back as an independent student. That was pretty much how my weeks were after the winter holidays, which was rather tiring and frustrating since I was limited to go out with friends. However, the rather strict enforcements that I had made me learn later on that I was brought up this way, and that’s what shaped who I am. Unlike most kids around my area who are blatantly spoiled and do almost no housework at home, I am probably able to manage a house of my own in terms of taking care of it and myself.

Sadly, I do regret not reviewing or studying as much for the courses that I will be taking in the spring. But I guess in return I get paid $6/hour to do little things for my mom. Hopefully I’ll be receiving ~$80 for the rather intensive labor. Originally, I earned about $180 for doing stuff for my mom, but I owed her $100 from Christmas shopping. Yup, that’s how many hours I was pulled around. Yay for saving up though.

I was rather shocked by the amount of money I received for my birthday, Christmas, and early Chinese New Year. I guess that’s the good thing about living far away in college, you get alot more money. Hopefully it will come to good use though. Depending if I do get a campus job, I’m hoping to save up for a basic digital SLR camera of my own. Despite the fact that I’m rather interested in the photography field, I find lens rather pricey which I don’t find it worth skipping hundreds of meals over the school year. Besides, I’m sure I’ll be content to have a basic DSLR that will have more options to configure than an ordinary digital camera.

Since I’m rather frugal (haha, yeah right) with my money, I’m currently aiming for the Sony alpha A200 or the Canon Rebel XS along with an extra battery and memory card. I was considering the Nikon D60 but Cnet Reviews made it seem like it’s not exactly worth the money for its specs. The Canon and Sony both have similar specs but the only thing that’s bugging me about the Sony model is the weight. Digital SLRs are rather heavy, but adding on four more ounces makes me twitch a bit for comparing two models of the same size. I’m trying to get opinions from a couple of people so if you have any suggestions, simply add a comment!

What will I be doing when I come back to Berkeley? Well for sure I’m cleaning the room since the dorms get dusty in a short period of time. I’m not surprised if my dust is caked with a nice thick layer of lint, dead skin cells, dead animal cells, and mites.  And no, I am not kidding, that’s what dust is really made of sadly enough. Anyways, after cleaning, I should unpack, and… I can get my third piercing! Hurrah! I’m a bit nervous but ecstatic at the same time. My friends and I are also planning to have a Chinese New Year party at Eric’s apartment. This is the first time I’m going to actually celebrate Chinese New Year with friends so hopefully it’ll work out and be fun.

So at the moment, I’m stuck at the Ontario airport because my flight got delayed for more than an hour. Luckily, I was able to change flights and take an earlier flight, but I still have to wait another 45 minutes or so before I can board. Actually, the speaker just said that my flight is delayed another 10 minutes, gah. To relieve myself from utter boredom, I ended up paying for T-Mobile hotspot $2.99/hr.

I can’t wait to go back. Hopefully the BART and bus will still be open…Wish me luck!

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Rewinding.

I have given myself another reason to say that my break isn’t as great as I expected it to. Unfortunately, I was not careful and unaware while backing out that I backed into my dad’s car. As a result, his car now has a huge scratch on his hind bumper that rubbed off a good handful of the paint coating. My sister’s car was lucky not to suffer the same damage, but has a slight dent on the bottom of her tail light and a few, but nearly unnoticeable, scratches.

Ugh. How can I be so stupid. Now I owe my mother probably a bajillion hours since my parents have to fix both cars eventually. I feel terrible.

Anyways, after yesterday’s trauma, I asked Jono to pick me up from my house to visit the high school campus. I find that I enjoy eating and conversing with only one person, two at most. Call me shy, but I deeply enjoy having conversations with nearly or no distractions, and I find that a large crowd are much more irritating than memorable. Plus, it’s been a while since Jono and I caught up with things, so it was nice talking and stuffing his face at the same time. Being the skinny person that Jono is, I made a bet with him that if he doesn’t gain enough weight to reach 145 pounds by the end of this winter break, he owes me two treats to boba. To be quite honest, I think I am going to win unless he gorges a gallon of guacamole a day.

The visit to the high school was quite refreshing and it was nice to see that nothing too much has changed other than some of my teachers have changed their glasses frames. While we were visiting my economics teacher, Mr. Bosanko, a student randomly waved at me as if she knew me while I was at high school. She definitely was a familiar face, which I quickly recalled later that she was in Treble Choir; however, I don’t recall ever talking to her in high school. I was surprised that the conversation that we had was not awkward at all; we quickly got into topics like IB, college decisions, and choir as if we knew each other for a while. It was nice though, considering that I had Key Club officers in that class and I didn’t talk nearly as much to them. Ironic isn’t it? Anyways, I also visited Mrs. Dutton whom I was so glad to see and catch up with.

After the visit, Eric came back from visiting UCLA and USC and bought a dozen of Diddy Reise cookies for me and my family. For his request, I showed him the rather embarrassing picture on the yearbook cover of me studying away on microeconomics as well as the studio pictures that I took at Taiwan and Shanghai a couple years back. It was nice to see him though after what has happened a few days back, hope he’s feeling better.

Last Saturday, I was fortunate enough to see Shark after his long road trip with his parents. I was surprised that his friends would actually go so far of a place to get Pokemon cards and posters. Oh well, it was a nice coincidence since the convention was only a five minute drive away from my house. Despite the long noon being with my mom in the office, it was definitely worth the wait since I was able to go out with Shark and his friends and introduce them to the asian town that I live in. Unfortunately, I was not able to show them as much as I wanted to, but I guess spending time with him and his friends was all worth it. I was also able to see my Key Club buddies, Cheryl and Dayna, again. Even though we haven’t seen each other since school started, I am so glad to see that we still catch up and share our usual girl talk.

After all these visits, I had this unusual feeling that nothing has changed since I left, as if time was frozen here while I was gone and resumed again when I came back. Although it’s impossible to ever happen, it was a nice feeling that nothing much has changed over the past few months with places or people.

Random note: My mom is obsessed with bookmarking links to YouTube videos on her iPhone, and she just found out how nifty that tool was this week. Now, she’s just as hooked to this as a kid playing video games, it’s quite hilarious.

Wrapping it up.

Happy New Year everyone. In retrospect, I found that 2008 not only went by quickly, but also had the most eventful times within friends, families, and myself. However, as the clock ticked its way to midnight, I did not have the same optimistic perspective that I have had after every new year. Have I grown bitter to everything to the point where I can’t even appreciate the upcoming new year? I am learning to change from this, but I am surely having a hard time to see the light in darkness.

How’s Winter Break? It’s certainly going, however I cannot say this with pure frankness that it’s going “great.” If you ever hear me say that and not complain about anything else after that, I am clearly smoking something. Bottom line, I wouldn’t do that either so you would never hear me say that. I could regretfully say that I can’t wait to get away from home, but that would be lying. But I certainly don’t like the fact that I’ve been groveling to get out of the house but hindered by my parental unit. Despite the fact that I run errands and spend every holiday and weekend with them, they bicker that I have been going out too much. It’s probably the college life that has made me not used to the fact that I can just go out whenever I want, but this is truly ridiculous to the point where I truly wonder how I gathered all this patience with my parents before I left for college.

I also have had this ponder of who truly reads my blog. No, not even just a seldom glance and scan, but who really have read every entry on this insignificant (but significant, what a contradiction) site. I am not starving for popularity or attention, but I am just curious of who really reads it and who truly acknowledges of what little words I record here. If it’s not too much for you, please make a short phrase (or don’t even write anything) of “I do read this.” in the comment box provided in every entry. If you are truly that afraid of disclosing your identity, you can tell me either via MSN or email. Thanks.

I can’t sleep.