blog & collective

Post-MCAT, I drove up to San Francisco with Melissa and Thomas to see Something Corporate on their reunion tour.

Together again!

I find it weird that bands I listen to are already having reunion tours. When I told my dad I was going to a reunion concert, he said:

Dad: “Who’s Something Corporate? Why don’t I know them? How long have they been broken up?”

Me: “You wouldn’t know them. They broke up 5 years ago in their early-twenties. Now they’re in their mid- to late-twenties.”

Dad: “Oh. Well that’s lame!”

Thanks, Dad. Well in any case, they still play a damn good show. And the lighting was awesome at the Warfield. Anyway, good concert, fun people, happy times!

For those of you who don’t know, my maternal grandmother has been many things in her life: plane crash survivor, Nationalist refugee, Taiwanese Air Force trained pilot, and of course a loving mother and grandmother. Now that she’s just getting into her 90s, she’s developing dementia and short term memory loss. And last Sunday, I found out she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It’s a rather malignant tumor — but because of her age, the doctors would prefer not to risk surgery and are instead putting her on mild chemotherapy to ease the pain. Eventually it will run its course, and until then we’ll just enjoy the time we have with her.

I went up to the city to visit her at the care home last Friday with Jonathan and Wing. They’ve been going to see her more often since they live in the city, and they said she was in high spirits compared to earlier in the week. She gets anxious going out after the sun goes down, but in her words, “I guess it’s alright if I’m with you…” — definitely a step up from the day before: “No, I usually don’t go out with strangers…” So where to go on a Friday night in the city? Walgreens!

We found hats.

My grandma is adorable. She kept saying, “You guys must be so annoyed with me — I walk so slow!”

We're fierce!

You messin' wit Grandma Tam? Lemme tell you somethin': Grandma Tam, she too cool fo' school.

We convinced her that we needed to buy ice cream and eat it. So we did.

Scoopin' ice cream. Grandma Tam gotta stay cool.

So she seems good for now, and it’s good practice for me to speak that much Chinese for extended periods of time. I’ll hopefully be back up sometime in the next week.

It’s hard to study for a CS midterm when your grandpa just passed away last night.

I’ll miss you grandpa.

Thus far, college has boggled my mind. There are so many people: new people, familiar people, amazing people, weird people, cool people–WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE? I can’t remember the names of people I meet because there are too many of them. My new dorm is amazing. We’re a four-class dorm, so for the first week, we bonded more since it was just we handful of freshmen doing all the orientation stuff. Now upperclassmen have moved in and I’m just hiding out in my room but with my door open. Maybe the music is scaring them off.

Classes started yesterday, finally. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but I’m sure when I finally get access to the chemistry problem set, I’ll feel it full blast. I’m taking 17 units, which is about average for the quarter system. My chemistry lecture yesterday went by so fast that I’m not entirely sure I actually went, except I have random notes on my lecture slides. I also had my Intro to Humanities class yesterday, which is called, “Visions of Mortality.” I’m really excited for this class, since it’s a little like philosophy (one of the professors is from the philosophy department). I’m not sure exactly where I stand there though, because that professor said that philosophy generally isn’t taught in high schools, and if it is, it’s not taught very well. I took that as a personal insult to Mr. Friend, the best AP English Language teacher ever, who did perfectly well teaching us philosophy. Maybe it wasn’t comprehensive, but how can you say that it wasn’t taught well if Mr. Friend was teaching it?

Those were my only two classes yesterday. That’s going to take some getting used to–the apparent lack of schedule. I definitely have a schedule. It just involves the weekend starting at 9:50 on Friday mornings. It also involves waking up at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Do you see me arguing? Right now I’m killing the time until my only class today, Biostatistics. Dear GOD I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. The exams are take-home tests. AUGGHH I’M SO DEAD. Oh well.

One interesting thing about this schedule of mine is that I have lots of down time, especially when the website where teachers post assignments is down. So yesterday I spent the whole afternoon fiddling with Photoshop and my tablet, trying to get some sort of coherent composition. I’ve decided to try my hand at digital painting. First attempt… DISASTER. Disaster on the scale of… MOUNT SAINT HELENS ERUPTING. Well maybe not that disastrous, but it was pretty darn ugly and confusing. Ah well, I’ll just keep fiddling with it. I was working on a Jade League scene (Etienne in the Notre Dame Cathedral from Chapter 1), but I’m thinking of changing it to something for which I have more reference photos at my disposal. The original Chapter 1 featured Etienne waiting by a fountain in the Place de la Concorde. I have a billion random photos of that, so that’s the planned composition. I started sketching it out just so see how things would fit together…

Then I got frustrated working on my tablet, so I did some actual sketches of Etienne’s trench coat and him leaning on something. (I didn’t bring my scanner Q_Q)

It feels good to do some sketching and drawing and graphics stuff. It’s been a long time since I last thought about spatial composition and proportions, then color and blending. I should’ve brought my pastel chalks and sketch book, but I haven’t used either in so long that it might’ve just been weird. If I really can’t stand it anymore with Photoshop, I might just ask my parents to ship my art stuff over. Blending is so much easier with pastel chalks… I think my art teacher told me once that I should work with them because I liked getting my hands dirty. When we did acryllic painting, I always ended up with painting my left hand white to make a new canvas and I’d paint all over it. It was more fun that way. Clearly this tablet-Photoshop painting thing is keeping my hands too clean.

I should head to class soon. I’m not entirely sure where it is. That could be a problem. BUT I’ve pilfered food for breakfast tomorrow. Clearly I’m getting used to things around here.

This morning after breakfast (at Perry’s, yet again) we boarded the tour buses (yet again) and drove up to the Diamondhead Crater. We had a .7 mile hike up to the bunker thing at the top. I didn’t bother counting the number of stairs near the top, but the sign at the bottom said it was over 200. My leg muscles believe it, even if you don’t. The scenery is beautiful from up there, but we had some mist and cloud cover which kept it cool, even if the beaches were harder to see.

Connie, fresh off the bus

the spiral staircase near the end

the view from inside the structure thing

Waikiki beach, as viewed from Diamondhead

looking down one set of stairs

looking up that flight of stairs

cool tree at the trail head

We made it back in time for lunch, but somehow I ended up hanging out with Naomi and Norinne, who didn’t eat lunch until after I split from them to join Connie, Emily, and Lil’ T, who ate lunch before I showed up. In the end, we went strolling through the International Market again, looking for some bargains. I picked up some California rolls for lunch, then I got myself another pendant to inspire some Jade League stuff hopefully :]

The thing in which I found my bird necklace pendant

We stopped by the beach, but Connie had a really bad headache plus she felt like maybe getting her suit, so the two of us headed back to the hotel and ended up being joined by Lil’ T and Emily, who split from us at the International Market. Connie took a shower when we got back and took a nap while I fiddled around with my laptop. I was about to shower but Norinne and Naomi got back and stole the shower. When I finally finished showering, we went downstairs to meet up for the “Dancers’ Cruise.” The ship we boarded was called the Ale Ale Kai V.

Dusk from the dock

our ship

"Ale Ale Kai V"

Coconut...

Cruises!

Dancer’s cruise… Let me tell you: VERY AWKWARD. Think awkward turtle spawning season. Like those baby sea turtle exoduses on the beach. I mean seriously, no fewer than 30 girls compared to no more than 6 guys on the dance floor. That’s not even the bad part–add in “proud” mothers videotaping their daughters dancing. No place for freaking, we are now a G rated dance. Luckily, there was an outdoor deck and an upper deck for sightseeing. We got to go out on the water before a fireworks display, so we had a real waterfront view of the show. In the meantime, they played a bunch of music I recognized, which is a little unusual since I don’t listen to much music that you can dance to. Yeah (Usher), Because of You (NeYo), Tell Me When to Go, and some other stuff. I spent most of my time on the upper deck lone wolfing though. Too bad there wasn’t a Derek around.

Fireworks from the ship

Norinne looking out on the water, trying not to be seasick

Got back and ate KFC for dinner, since the cruise didn’t provide food (LAME). I am now on the floor, looking out on our hotel balcony. Everyone else in the room is asleep. I sort of packed my luggage in preparation for checking out tomorrow. I haven’t really had a good night’s sleep all week, but maybe if I’m tired enough, I’ll sleep more soundly? Maybe it’s just this squishy pillow that’s bothering me. G’night!
Oh, almost forgot. Hawaiian sunset twilight picture of the day:

Twilight