Having come across some blogs by my fellow masters students, I wasn\’t surprised that a hcii blog sprouted up. I am just surprised that the username hasn\’t been taken already. Nifty. :)

I have such a bad habit of procrastinating sleep. And for that, I have a bad habit of procrastinating taking a shower.

I don\’t want to be suckered into homesickness, but I miss…Berkeley. I miss the cool mild weather. I miss the 10 minutes after times (when a class is listed as starting at 10 am, it actually starts at 10:10 am). I miss Durant Food Court and La Burrita (no I don\’t miss La Val\’s…or Old Tea House). I miss the foothill cc and how I would suddenly get suckered into staying 3 hours overtime fixing laptops out of guilt. I miss living in the living room. I miss having my parents close by, only because my mom would cook for me and do my laundry. I miss…MIKE FERNANDO. I miss my Ikea desk with the two shelves on the side. I miss my yellow lemon poster and my print of Van Gogh\’s The Starry Night. I miss my endless supply of ramen and won ton. I miss walking across the street confident that a car will not run me over. I miss getting off the bus FROM THE BACK DOOR instead of having to run to the front door. I also miss only showing my bus pass when I get on the bus rather than showing it when I get off. I miss the protests. I miss having no cellular reception in my apartment. I miss the football games that I never attended. I miss Mr. William Hung the civil engineering major who has no professional training. I miss using a student id number rather than my social security number. I miss the Pacific Time Zone. I miss Bearfacts and Bearlink. I miss the 51. I miss the spontaneous late night snacks and watching movies on a puny computer monitor with people. I miss the cheap forest green futon. I miss being rudely woken up by garbage trucks and construction every morning. I miss having classes in lecture rooms with broken desks and broken chairs. I miss the ilosttrackoftime chats with good friends. I miss my nice, fat wamu bank account.

But on a happy note, I have received many free things from CMU (although technically my expensive tuition probably funds all of these things). So far, I have gotten a lanyard, a shirt from Women@SCS (just for being female and in SCS), four continental breakfasts, four FULL lunches, one wine/\”cheese\” reception, one HCI t-shirt (has not arrived, but soon!), and…FREE TAMPONS (girls only, sorry guys).

It seems always strange to me how I come to Carnegie Mellon and I still…consistently meet asians. Not only are all my housemates (well one is hapa) asian, but also the people I know in my program and the undergrads I have met are all asian. (Personally, it\’s probably a psychological unconcious thing–we believe we can relate to people who look like us.) And there\’s me, the so-called white-washed me. The me who prefers eating nonasian food and listening to foreign music (but not music from asia). But I feel like I am really missing out on the people I don\’t really get a chance to meet. I believe everyone can be an interesting person. However, it\’s very difficult to hit that sweet spot. The spot that breaks that shell–this is where the person will let go of all restraints, all limitations to just be himself or herself. All my life (and I never quite understood it), people have always found me intriguing and unique. Being me, I assume (almost) everyone can be the same way. Being in Pittsburgh, I miss the role I had in Berkeley. That is, in the last month I was there, I suddenly found my place. I knew where and who I was. After 4 years, I finally was able to express myself without bubbles of insecurity and embarrassment. And I had the confidence to prove it. Then zap me here more than 3000 miles away, I am again sitting on concrete blocks, trying to shield myself from unpredictability rather than embracing it.

Surprisingly, almost half of the student population at CMU is Asian. And even more so, there are a lot of people originally from California. And BERKELEY. Carnegie Mellon doesn\’t have a real mascot. Or at least, the school colors seem to be muted in the background. How sad it is to live away from my blue and gold tinted non-spirited years of Berkeley.

I am all…socialized out. Somehow, I get very tired when I am hanging out in large groups of people I don\’t know…that well. Personally, I have always preferred small groups of people. This proves that I am an introvert at heart. At Berkeley, I rarely went out with large groups. For some reason, I found myself always hanging out with people one on one.

Yesterday, I went bar-hopping at Southside with the MHCI people (and some phd students who couldn\’t find their own group…haha). At first, I was reluctant to go for the fact that I don\’t drink, but it was interesting. Better than my previous bar experiences. (The most recent one I can remember was the \”experience\” in Berkeley, the night before I was supposed to leave for CMU at Blake\’s where we stood outside idiotically because not everyone was 21+…) We went to five different bars–two charged $1 cover for the so-so dj music. Most likely, I won\’t be doing anything like this for a long time. ONE picture here captured by Kun with his cell sent to his moblog at yafro. It\’s Ian, Justin, me and Carol in a bar that kicked all 20 of us out at 1:30 am (just 10 minutes after we arrived!)

And today, I started assembling my desk. I not only dropped glue all over myself, but I discovered what a weakling I am. Also, it\’s difficult to put such a complex desk together without anybody helping. Right now, after 4 hours, I have the base complete and still have the hutch and glass monitor shelf to go.

It\’s funny how attending events are all about if you go, I will go with the implied if you don\’t go, I won\’t go.

After hearing all the horror stories from both friends and online reviews, I was expecting the worse from U-haul. The night before, I was about to cancel the entire thing. I wanted to have the stores deliver to me (if purchase is over $50, delivery is free) rather than dragging it to the car myself and dragging it to the house. But everything turned out ok. Because I didn\’t know the bus system and was extremely tired, I got to the U-haul place 30 minutes late. Kun was already waiting there…and had called me twice during my 2 mile hike. The cargo van was surprisingly clean…well up front. The gas tank was actually full. The AC actually worked. Fortunately, Kun offered to drive which allowed me to catch up on sleep and be a horrible navigator. And now I understand why every time I called the Washington Blvd station, I got put on hold. They\’re constantly understaffed. No wonder U-haul can make good business.

I now have a glass/wood desk/mobile cart set and office chair from Staples. A shelf for downstairs from Ikea. Only $24 worth of groceries from Super Walmart (when I first went inside, it was scary…the store that is a monopoly out here…and also intimidated by the number of pleasantly plump shoppers common in Pittsburgh). And a lunch from Eat \’N Park. Personally, I still think I could have saved much more money by ordering online (hello $30 off $150 from Office Depot), but it\’s too late now.

Yesterday I met some undergrads (connection through my aunt). One of them described the dating scene. The reason why guys don\’t go after CMU girls: \”They\’re either Chinese, married or ugly.\” And about the high male to female ratio in the School of Computer Science (SCS): \”The odds are good, but the goods are odd.\”

Having no desk is getting to me. Every night, I spent hours just sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap doing my usual thing. Now I am wondering why I using my baby PB every day throughout the summer, rarely using the desktop. The keyboard is feeling cramped. I want to use my microsoft keyboard. I want to use a numeric keypad rather than struggle with that row of keys at the top. And most of all, i want to use my mouse.

I also need a monitor. A lcd monitor. But the way I am doing things, it seems like I won\’t purchase one for another week. Laziness. I still haven\’t ordered new checks from my brand new PNC bank account.

In other news, I have been very lucky to receive a graduate assistantship. To think, last year if I hadn\’t e-mail a graduate student asking about research…I wouldn\’t be where I am today. Last year, around this time, I had finished taking my first GRE intending to apply to low-level, below-mediocre graduate schools in computer science (e.g. San Jose State), especially those that didn\’t require a letter of recommendation. At that time, I thought that only a masters in computer science would secure me a good job even if I didn\’t enjoy programming that much. I was so ready to pursue that path until…the research and exposure to GUIR…turned me to the path of human computer interaction. What if I never e-mailed the graduate student (now the professor that I\’ll be working with…for the next 2 semesters)? What if I had lost my courage and submitted to my limited cognitive science degree? I would probably still be in the Bay Area. Would I have met the same people I did during the summer? What if I had turned down the graduate student\’s offer of research to do lowly undergraduate work in URAP? It\’s choices like these that can change my entire path in life.

So on my fourth day of class, the electricity goes out throughout the campus. Can\’t access internet. Can\’t get money from ATM. Can\’t go downstairs to next class because no lights. How? Why? Isn\’t CMU a private university? What happened to all that money? Everyone scurried outside to bask in the late afternoon sun.

Class cancelled. Time to get ice cream.

Knowing that someday, my blog might be read by potential employers…I really wish there was some kind of anti-discriminatory law on blogs. This is a reason that I don\’t provide a personal url (because I still have yet to complete a portfolio site). What if they judge me based on my personal opinions or the photos I put up. What if they judge me on my personal style of writing. And this comes all to the surface upon the news of a Friendster developer being fired for her blog. It\’s a good thing that this kind of thing doesn\’t happen in school. CMU can\’t possibly let me go for such misconduct of passing along private information…

I had something awe-inspiring, something so meaningful, something thought-provoking to blog. But more than three hours have passed (plus a \”free\” dinner of pizza) since that epiphany and now I don\’t remember what I was going to say.

I think that happens a lot to me now. That along with my random \”disappearings\” aka my sudden falling asleep while using my laptop…