Even though I had 10 hours of sleep, I still was able to twist my ankle today. Although this time it wasn\’t because of bad shoes or bad coordination. This time it was because of BAD INTERFACE. I was walking out of the old student center, the exit on the bottom floor and opened the door. It was very bright outside so I assumed that the door opened straight to a level surface. Instead, as I took a step outside and suddenly I found myself sprawled on the ground. Apparently the door opened into one single stair with no sign that said \”WATCH OUT\”.

Before that, I was thinking what a great day it was. That even though I got up late (at noon), I was still able to go to the Technical Opportunities Conference (career fair @ cmu) and talk to a few companies. Dropped off my resume. Then was able to squeeze out some hints from the TAs for the stat hw. Then I fell.

Oh and right now my bed collapsed. I finally put the screws in.

Our house is finally getting a new fridge after I hassled the maintenance person who came to fix our toilets today (I guess they didn\’t want to respond to our earlier fridge requests). But with a broken fridge comes no ice. I have only 3 pieces of ice now in a plastic bag over my ankle now…which I put on my newly constructed file cabinet with a tempered glass top.

—

It has been exactly one month since I left Berkeley. Tomorrow marks the day since I left California. How much has changed since? Everything is almost the same. But. Relationship-wise, it isn\’t the same. Not that kind of relationship. But it took almost one month to realize how dependent I was on feelings and attachment to people. It took that long to discover that I can be happy by myself. I can be happy with hours of music and myself. But yesterday, my sister made a good point. Memories are supposed to be times of remembrance. For awhile, I had detested how I go through my photo album and found picturess of people I never spoke to anymore. And how at the moment that the picture was taken, we were oblivious to what was going to happen to our friendship. But pictures and that kind of memory is supposed to be a capture of once-upon-a-time happiness. It\’s no regret for the future, but rather it\’s contentment that it happened.

What is a home? One of my friends a few years ago did an essay on that very topic. She asked me to be part of the paper. The interview was about what home meant for me. At that time, I lived in the Berkeley dorms. I never said I was going back home ever. I told people that I would be going back to the dorm or go to Lafayette. Ultimately, at the time, she was able to imply that I didn\’t have a home.

And now? I could call my parents\’ house in Lafayette home. I also could say that the house in Pittsburgh is my home. But I entirely avoid the use of the word home. Mostly for the fact that it isn\’t permanent. Is it home if my primary sleeping area is there? Is it home if my desk is there? Is it home where I can keep my food together? A place that I call my own? But what if I keep all my things in two places? Am I referring to the entire city? The entire state? Just my room? And the bathroom?

In Berkeley, because of that belief, I always would be confused if someone said they were going home. Normally, I took it to be their original hometown. The parents\’ house. I miss home meant that they missed their hometown, their friends, their family, the things they grew up around. Because that was the most typical desire.

Home is one of those words that would always puzzle me. Go home.

And now for another indecisive moment – what to do for thanksgiving?

I know some people must be thinking how about _go home to the bay area_? The fact of the matter is that Thanksgiving has never been big in my family. My mom, a registered nurse, usually works on Thanksgiving. Because it\’s like that, my sister usually stays in San Diego during the weekend. So usually it ends up being only my dad and me having turkey soup to commenorate the day. But what to do what to do!

From time to time, I envy how people have a place to go to for the holidays. For me, Thanksgiving is the same as Christmas. My mom works. So it\’s just my dad, my sister and me. My grandparents usually attempt a dinner a few days before Christmas. A dinner at the Chinese restaurant. There\’s no family rituals. None of that. And so, I am waiting for the day that I could join another\’s family\’s festivities during the holidays. What does it mean to spend family time? What does it mean?

On another note, I noticed that I don\’t like spending time with people in large groups. I lose myself in the unfamiliarity. There\’s so much of this group thing here. I can\’t do it. I want to spend time with people one-on-one. But that\’s not the way it works since it\’s such a small program. If I invite him, I must automatically invite her…and him…and him too.

I found this nice cheesecake place the other day. They also have good bakalava.

My housemate cooked dinner for us today! :) Plus 4 other guests. So 8 total.

But the thing is that we don\’t have a dining table yet. So what we did was take the old box spring that one of the former tenants used. Put that on top of 3 yellow crates that another tenant left behind. And there was a table! All of us sat on pillows, Japanese style. Each person had two dishes plus a bowl and a wine glass. We had turkey katsu, chicken paprika, and guacomole dip. For dessert, Hershey\’s peanut butter cookies and cupcakes. So good! For some reason, lately I have been eating too quickly and I constantly finish my meal way before everyone else.

I also learned how to use the dishwasher today. In Lafayette, my parents never used the dishwasher. My mom used it as a storage space for her large pots. In Berkeley, I always washed the dishes by hand. Soap, rinse, and let dry in the rack. It\’s just amazing what a dishwasher could do…

So there are four things I could do tonight:

Which one should I do? Nothing really appeals to me at the moment. Most likely scenario: NOTHING.

I still have no monitor for my PC desktop. Yet so far, I seem to be surviving okay without one, relying on my powerbook. The problem is that my hands are starting to feel cramped, constrained to this mini keyboard. Not to mention, I don\’t feel ok having just one computer.

Any good deals out there for a 17\”+ lcd monitor? Don\’t need speakers. DVI would be nice.

When I was in the computing cluster the other day, I saw a geeky-looking guy booting a Windows machine into BIOS. It was obvious he was the CCON, the equivalent of the technical coordinator at Rescomp. My desire to fix all the Windows machines there…or just simply to boot into admin mode was too strong. Whenever I see a broken laptop, I have this incredible urge to take the computer into my hands and troubleshoot like crazy. But I have to remind myself that I am not tech support here. I am just another student who gets really irritated when printing is broken and the network is not up. The other day, I spent a good ten minutes figuring out successfully why a fellow student\’s excel document was not opening. Then when encountered with a laptop that would not connect to the Internet. I first checked the task manager for viruses…then I stopped myself. I could get into too much into troubleshooting and it would never end… Stop.

I can influence other people to get their own blogs. :)

b: you know when you said im more talkative today?
me: yessss
b: you shoulda said \”typative\”

[HE SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO REMAIN ANONYMOUS BECAUSE HE DOESN\’T WANT TO BE FOUND.]

And out of that conversation, comes typative.com!

Four years ago, I used to \”blog\” more openly and freely. There was no impending disaster of Google finding me. Most people didn\’t have a long enough attention span to read my journal. Back then, I wrote about everything, everything emotional and thoughtful. Nowadays, I find that I have to censor myself. Be plain. Because I\’ll never know who is reading… For some reason, people are often shocked when they eventually read the blogs/journals of people they know. He thinks like that?! It\’s probably the blunt emotions written online. The thoughts that they never knew about. Why are we so scared about things that are there, but we just don\’t know about? It\’s not scary. To me, it\’s almost comforting to read blogs/journals of people I know. At least, I know they\’re human.

Almost every Introduction to HCI methods lecture, the professor forgets about her computer\’s screensaver. Unfortunately being me, I am always distracted by anything moving around. One professor\’s screensaver is the default calming MacOSx rainbow screensaver. The other professor\’s screensaver is unfortunately a slideshow of her family. So while she was lecturing about the Artifact models and the sequence models, I paid more attention to pictures of her daughter doing ballet, a picture of her dogs running after a ball, a picture of someone on a donkey at Grand Canyon, a picture of her kids wearing Berkeley sweatshirts…

I wouldn\’t like to be the professor\’s daughter. To be the one that keeps showing up in class with a goofy smile against the wall.

I agree with social life being a game. It isn\’t supposed to be that way. When we win, we become friends. When we lose, we are no more than aquaintances. There are always people who don\’t try. There are always those that smile and they find the potential within themselves to be someone. Stop letting it become a game.

As quoted from the comments, \”This is why the Internet was invented.\”

To find things such as How to wrap a burrito.

Considering how I never really \”cooked\” during my 4 years at Berkeley, I have been in periods of near-starvation because I was reluctant to pull out my wallet and empty it. Last weekend, I finally gave in and purchased two cooking pots. Not to mention, 12 bags of ramen from the only Asian market in Pittsburgh. Now I can survive.

Next step. What happened to my former workout routine?

When I thought I figured out the bus schedule, I took the wrong route and ended up in an unfamiliar area of large brick houses and a CVS pharmacy. The strange thing about the PAT bus system is that you pay or show your pass at different times depending on the time of day and the direction of the bus. I think it comes from the fact that when someone travels more than two zones (more than three miles I think), it\’s 50 cents more to ride. But I am not sure. So if the bus is going toward downtown, I show my pass when I get on. If the bus is going away from downtown, I show my pass when I get off. Except after 7 pm when I show my pass when I get on in both cases. What\’s so annoying is that the driver controls the back door, so if I am forced to sit in the back, I have to run toward the front to make my stop.

So I ended up walking in circles around the Northern part of Squirrel Hill at 9 pm at night. Interestingly, whenever I saw someone walking toward me on the sidewalk, that person would always deliberately cross the street (to avoid me?) Being a little too self-determined, I didn\’t stop to ask where Forbes was located. So after 5 minutes, I spotted a Carnegie Mellon sign and found my way back. I had landed in an area that was 6 blocks away. I nearly died walking back.

AIM has been one of those things that changed my life, made my life worse, and made my life so much brighter. In CMU, I have begun to realize that AIM is just a mini-tool for most people. It\’s like a mailbox for most people whereas for me, it has been a constant ON of socialization. But the point was, I came across someone\’s AIM profile today. Why is it that there are some people that we are reluctant to get to know? We sometimes don\’t try. And I saw this person\’s profile and saw that we had similar tastes. Same tastes in music, movies and tv. Very oddly the same. But I never really tried because my first impression of him wasn\’t that great. And he never tried. We could have gotten along really well. I lost the chance to make a connection. Missed opportunities?