about to go see an inspiration in my life & one of my favorite living people on this planet
it’s that time of year again
where the geographic divide between NorCal (second home!) and SoCal (home!) becomes temporal - I no longer look at SoCal as a place where people are living their lives and shit’s happening and the world turns, as a place to go back to - instead it’s a time to look forward to. It’s a date. December 14th. Until then, SoCal doesn’t exist. Nothing’s happening. Wind up doll out of energy. No one lives there, not until I get off the plane and my feet touch ground and that sweat-inducing SoCal sunshine meets my SoCal-dipped hair. And then SoCal moves again, gold rolls out throughout the hills like the happy ending of some cheesy-ass plotline where some group of unlikely protagonists embarked on some journey to restore & reanimate the land. And all will be well again.
As always, a tinge of sadness in saying goodbye to Berkeley - this time for five weeks! That’s almost as long as summer! Whether I can stand 5 weeks at home (which always seems so much sweeter when I’m not there) remains to be seen, but for now SoCal is marked on my calendar and the singular thing I look forward to on the agenda. Adios to my favorite 4 months at Cal so far, and here’s to hoping that the next 4 are even better..
Till then, Berkeley…
tales from the beyond
1) i was writing my peer report and the person i’m reviewing wrote in his essay “Tonio has many complex feels towards…”
complex feels
feels
dude, you might want to get off the internet a bit..
2) some anonymous kind soul within this maze of filled library carrels just said “bless you”. i can’t see you, but thank you! (my nose is killing me!)
3) thank god i only have like 10 minutes of battery power left on this laptop.. ochem has my undivided attention tonight, how romantic! (tonight’s also the night i block all sources of happiness accessible through the internet. i haven’t done it yet and i’m ALREADY breaking down from google reader withdrawal! why is life so hard?????)
4) if there is any time when having internalized the hours of every cafe in Downtown Berkeley isn’t a completely useless skill… it’s during finals! Rattling off Starbucks start & close times in the elevator makes the dreaded ride 948759384x less awkward. Plus what better way to bond than through mutual soul-crushing sleepless stress-filled suffering, right?
5) word on the street facebook was they were giving out 5-hour-energies on Sproul. that’s incredibly well-intentioned, but how could they expect me to have the strength to walk there when i haven’t had one?!
6) it smells janky in here, which really makes me wonder. some of yall’ve really been utilizing 24 hour library to its fullest extent, huh?..
things that upset me
1. when the list of things to do today fills up an entire page of the agenda
2. cyber monday: perfect item, perfect price. SORRY, THIS SIZE IS OUT OF STOCK.
3. when no one brings good food to a potluck
4. people who don’t respond to emails
5. all chem labs ever
6. all scheduling conflicts caused by all chem labs ever
7. when the actual temperature and the listed “feels like” temperature are the same. yall are slacking.
8. guys
you know it’s been a semi-productive week when you’re more than 2 episodes behind your favorite podcast ayeee
somewhere on this planet
there is a picture of me pressed tightly against a porn model’s boobs
accidental photos are the best ones. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes. watched them from the hill cuz we’re cheap college students. the security spent all night shooing us to the far side of the parking lot, but when Home started playing they pretty much gave up. everyone ran over and jumped and sang and danced - it was easily the best part of the night.
summer goodbyes are the worst. you’re standing there, sweating bullets, trying to hug as much of the other person as possible without revealing just how sticky and gross you actually are. “you’re coming back in December, right?” but “yeah!” somehow does not sound as reassuring as it should be, maybe because when you’re standing in sweltering 100+ degree weather, winter break seems like the furthest thing in the world. miles away. light years away. a physical impossibility? utterly unimaginable.
goodbye, summer.
I hate transportation.
1) My flight yesterday got delayed for over 2 hours, which doesn’t sound TOO bad, until I did the math and realized I’d spent 9 whole hours yesterday either going to/from the airport, waiting for the plane, or being on the plane itself - I left my apartment at 1:45 and opened the door to home at 11:20. In that time I could have DRIVEN from Berkeley to LA with 2 hours to spare. Figures.
2) Today what should have been a 3.5 hour drive took ~7 hours because of some accident along the 101. I thought I’d be home by 8, in time to renew The Mothman Prophecies and finish the essay that was technically due today - but we were stranded in Calabasas for over 2 hours, during which time my phone conveniently ran out of batteries. Our car pulled into the driveway at 11:54; I couldn’t save the essay, BUT(!!) I could at least renew The Mothman Prophecies before the day is over. By 11:57 I was logged in and ready to renew. And then the above screen appeared.
I couldn’t renew The Mothman Prophecies because someone’d put a hold on that book. A hold. On the book I brought back to Southern California with me. Sigh. $2.25’s not bad, but really, the day wasn’t meant to end ANY other way..
~A MONTH LATER, THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY APARTMENT:
- living a minute away from john’s $1 ice cream. i’ve already gone 6 or 7 times, by the end of 3 months i think i’ll have tried every flavor there ahaha
- being able to see the campanile from the living room. also, the spectacular view from the rooftop deck.
- my neighbors all look like the most interesting people in the world. but who am i kidding? that’s EVERYONE in berkeley!
- the jazzy live music that drifts up to my room from Jupiter’s across the street. Performing tonight is Curtis Bumpy, who brought the house down a while ago with some Curtis Mayfield (above, the last min or so of their 6 min rendition). I may not be old enough to hit up Jupiter’s past 9, but free jazz every other night is fair compensation..
- it’s always sunny, never hot. the best kind.
- location, location, location. never not loving the hustle & convenience of living downtown.
- sliding doors for the rooms! so well-designed, saves so much space. why aren’t all doors sliding doors?!
THING I DON’T LIKE ABOUT MY APARTMENT:
- the internet holy shit it’s been disconnecting me every 5 minutes for the past three days how am I supposed to get anything done it’s RESCOMP all over again (it’s been disconnected basically the entire time I’ve been typing this)
I just got Mark Foster’s autograph. I teared up. It’s been 2 years since I first fell in love with Pumped Up Kicks. I don’t know what to feel, I never thought this day would come, I’m so happy words cannot describe. I’m speechless.
charles jenkins retweeted me today so nothing else even matters
honestly cogsci readings could you present a more interesting topic in a more boring way why does it take 30 pages to say something that i can sum up for my friend in 30 seconds whywhywhy i get that you’re a scientific journal article and you’re probably not legit unless you cite every relevant researcher and their study and their year and their dog but why the fuq is there that much research done about a topic as obscure as “categorization” in the first place
why
this is probably not the way for a cogsci major to talk
but i’m considering public health right now
so
there’s that..
interstate 5
I wonder what it’s like to live in one of those cities by the freeway. I just realized how absolutely vague and unhelpful that sentence was, because that’s applicable to just about any place. But I think people get what I mean. Right? Those lonely forgotten towns whose only purpose seems to be to exist by the freeway. To provide gas and rest stops and food for travelers wanting to give their legs a stretch before continuing on their journey. Towns that are specks on a map, places you drive through to get to other places. Never the destination.
And those faaarms. Those acres and acres of farms along the way. Who owns them? Who works there? By the third trip, associations are made along the 5 - that spot in Kern county where the ridiculously cute and polite and unnecessary cop pulled us over for speeding. Or Coalinga, where we stopped for some fast food, the town flanked by farms with “CONGRESS CREATED THE DUST BOWL” and “THE POLITICIANS CREATED THE WATER CRISIS” signs. I remembered my CogSci professor’s stories about her weekends in Central Valley and the people that lived there; it sounded like people whose opinions I couldn’t even pretend to want to hear. I never did understand what her point was; how she could manage to generalize all the people of a big region in California and why she lived there when she only ever did so in an unpositive light.
I get a bar of signal in places, or 3 at most. But the mobile salespeople in these towns probably scoff at anyone who walks in looking for a 4G enabled phone. “Buddy, 3G’s the best you get around here,” they say in my overactive imagination. “If you’re lucky.”
But that’s unfair, because Walnut might have been a speck, they might have all been specks, Diamond Bar and Rowland Heights and San Gabriel and Arcadia and Pasadena. Taipei is a speck on a speck of an island.
And I guess that’s the grand illusion, this inflated view of self-import, a self-aggrandized sense of what’s right and what SHOULD be. It all reeks of privilege and luxury, but in another life I might have been a truck driver. There’s something beautifully simple about keeping your eyes on the road.
Whatever the case, the 5 (or I suppose in NorCal, it’d simply be “5”) is getting just a bit too deep for me. And boring. They just might be synonyms. I don’t think I’m ever making the NorCal-SoCal driving trip again, or at least not for a year or two - but if I do, I think I’d rather take the 101 (“101”). Go along the PCH. Cause isn’t that what living in California is all about?
Pooped but happy.
Just got home after a long day spent hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in a while. All day I had this giddy feeling of energy and joy. Like that happiness that sets in when you’re with a group of people that you’re super comfortable around and love to spend time with. Another one of those days to come tomorrow! And to be spent at the beach, no less! Ah, summer.
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