May 2010
1 post
It’s been almost a year since I’ve last written something in here, and it wouldn’t suffice to try and summarize its events in one go. Maybe in time I’ll be able to touch on these things. I’d like to start writing again.
As I’m packing away my belongings for the summer, bidding farewell to close friends, and awaiting my return to California, I can’t...
August 2009
2 posts
The Dilemma
I’m currently writing from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where the Go Congress is taking place. It’s been refreshing to get away from things for a little while to gain a bit of perspective.
The biggest difference between this summer and the last is that I have a job now that keeps me busy from 9-5. While the experience has been immensely valuable, it has brought with...
The other day, my mom told me that my eyes don’t shine anymore.
July 2009
1 post
Summer's Tedium
I had originally planned on spending this summer to chill and relax - my “summer of self-discovery” - but it seems that I can’t handle the responsibility that comes with so much free time. At the end of the school year, I applied for and was accepted for a position at a start-up company this summer in Silicon Valley. There are four Princeton students - two recent graduates, a...
June 2009
2 posts
TED: Ideas worth spreading →
If I had more time, I would definitely be spending it exploring this website and listening to all the talks they have online. TED.com invites amazing people to give talks about their areas of expertise, providing messages that are inspirational, amazing, or just touching. I was pretty stoked to see that they have a talk by Paula Scher talking about graphic design - just to illustrate the wide...
Reflection
Having survived the hellish final stretch of the school year, I come back to this this blog with a lot to say but lacking all the words to say them. I’m heading back to California today for a full four months of summer, and the feeling can only be aptly described as surreal.
I suspect that over the course of this school year that I’ve gone through many transformations, both visible and...
May 2009
4 posts
“I think you’re wise to seek of sense of home. For some people, an abiding...”
– a professor to a friend of mine
The 21 Club →
That Princeton has dumbasses like these makes me ashamed of coming here.
This one's pretty funny too :) →
Why are fonts so hilarious to me? :( →
April 2009
14 posts
Self-understanding
“So instead of being so self-critical about your ‘lack of passion,’ ask yourself what you care about — and start really pouring yourself into it without questioning why you’re doing it. If it’s the thing you’re supposed to be doing, you’ll find that it becomes an obsession, which then becomes a ‘passion.’”
It seems like only...
AC: princeton is fucking painful at times
Me: still, its not like it never gets better
AC: but it requires true courage for those people who don't buy the bullshit to rise above it
Me: the bullshit?
AC: the game that princeton is
arrrrr ye pirates
In a landmark case of anti-piracy, four Swedish men who ran thepiratebay.org, a torrent tracker website, were sentenced to a year in jail and $3.6 billion in damages to companies for pirating intellectual property. While I don’t particularly have a stance on the issue, after looking into their website, those assholes got what they deserved. The Linotype letters were particularly incendiary...
sometimes princeton is pretty cool
AZ: do u want a white castle burger
Me: uhh
Me: yes
AZ: or taco bell?
AZ: or both
Me: ..
Me: yes
AZ: ok
AZ: gimme a sec
AZ: ill be by in like 5
Me: ..
Me: THANKS
Me: omg
AZ: hahaha
AZ: wait u do know theres pizza out here right
AZ: in the common room
AZ: from papa johns
Me: ...
Me: *has gone away*
cool photographer →
He takes his camera and keeps it in the same position all day and comps his photos together. Pretty nifty.
putting things in perspective
This morning in my COS precept, I received an IM from a friend of mine letting me know that a friend of mine had passed away.
I’ve got to say that I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life, and I’ve been fortunate enough to have little experience with death up until now. A couple months ago, an acquaintance of mine passed away, but today, this one really hit me hard.
I know LB from a...
mediocrity
These past few weeks, R and I have had multiple discussions about some of our peers at Princeton, all of which have left both of us feeling rather inadequate about our own abilities. We both usually conclude to be “inferior subhumans,” and while I know that this is certainly not the case, the question still stands in my head - why am I here?
In high school, I did fairly well on...
Am I the only one who finds the Wiki articles on... →
Don’t judge me.
ooooooh →
i’m a sucker for pretty things
The Other Drink
People at Princeton drink a lot. Of course, this is true for any college, but I’m also talking about a different kind of drink.
I’m talking about these little things:
I’ve been going to the convenience store by campus these days for midnight snacks, and without fail, people are always purchasing these things in addition to the coffee in hand and the Red Bulls for the fridge.
...
Princeton Preview
Throughout the year, my friends and I have often joked that if I were a host for Princeton Preview (the prefrosh weekends), I’d thoroughly convince them against coming here. With the last batch of college admissions results out as of a couple days ago, I found that a handful of my friends back in high school had gotten into the tiger cage. For some odd reason, I felt the desire to contact...
Separation
It’s been a good 10+ days since my last update, but that’s because J was up here with me at Princeton for her spring break. We spent a lot of time in New York, and we also spent a lot of time being egregiously lazy and loving it.
Everytime J and I part ways and go back to our respective schools, the emotions are always the same. I’m overcome with sadness, the reality of our...
March 2009
13 posts
AWOL
I realize that it’s been a while since anyone has heard from me. While I doubt anyone really noticed that I fell off the face of the planet, Since you last heard from me, I’ve knocked off a paper and five midterms - a rather hellish episode that I don’t wish to relive.
And now, I’m now on my Spring Break in good old Cali, visiting J at her college. Tomorrow we’re...
that whole "future" issue
jenwondering:
Tonight my mother and I discussed future careers over the phone. While I’ve made it open that I wish go to into the biomedical field, I haven’t exactly decided what I want to do. It started off with the Asian dream of being a doctor, then it slowly evolved when I realized maybe it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I’m still a Biology major, and I’m still taking science courses, but after...
am i stupid?
I’ve been sifting through these academic writings about Maus and the relationship between memory and testimony. I don’t understand how people can think on such abstract, philosophical levels and then articulate their thoughts using such clear yet specific rhetoric. I’m having a hard enough time even understanding and conceptualizing what these readings are saying, but I have to...
fickle weather
I don’t believe this. Just completely out of the blue, today is 71 degrees, and I’m wearing a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and my rainbows for the first time since summer in California.
Less than a week ago, we had a snowstorm with 10 inches of snow per night and subfreezing temperatures.
I miss living in a state where the temperature pretty much stays the same all year round.
ugh..
This is an actual emergency and not a test. At 12:40 a.m. Saturday, March 7, there is an unconfirmed report of a student-age male carrying a weapon in the area of Spelman Hall. Stay inside. Public Safety has recommended that all students remain inside until further notice. Do not go outside to travel to another building. Close and lock the doors and windows.
Check e-mail and/or the...
logistics of the ldr
This month marks the 7th month since my relationship with J became a LDR (long distance relationship). She’s in California, and I’m here on the opposite side of the country, 2782 miles and 3 timezones away. Believe it or not, we’re doing better than ever, and we’ve definitely settled into a state of comfortableness and are accustomed to our separate but still connected...
speaking impediments
Over the last two weeks, I’ve been hanging out with R occassionally. R is definitely a humanities person, and language is her forte. As such, she not only uses a lot of very impressive words, but she’s been particularly observant about an idiosyncrasy of mine that I had never noticed.
In the middle of conversation, R will sporadically interrupt me and mock my pronunciation of certain...
Brand New →
A design blog that I’ve been following for a while now. It’s fascinating to be able to look into the process that went into making a logo, instead of judging solely by the end product. It’s also interesting to note that these days, companies are attempting to rebrand themselves by shaking off their old logos, but in doing so, some of them are losing the image that consumers have...
emma watson... →
You could’ve at least applied here.
better: design for social causes
I figured that it would be impossible to fully convey my experience at Princeton if I withheld certain information that would make me relatively easy to identify. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really have nothing to hide. Since it is a big part of my life at Princeton, it was only a matter of time before I talked about my design job on campus. Maybe this isn’t much...
February 2009
14 posts
the flirt
Often I am asked the question, “what is your biggest regret in high school?”
To me, the answer is rather easy.
In high school, I was known for a number of things, and one of them was being “a flirt.” Especially during my senior year of high school, when I felt like I had nothing to lose, I was, according to my friends, quite the “manwhore.”
Coming out of a...
no thanks, tumblr
I convinced that with my last post, tumblr now thinks that I’m some sort of nymphomaniac. They keep recommending me porn blogs…
princeton porn
During my compsci precept, my preceptor was giving a presentation off his laptop and alt-tabbed to the coding program we use. In doing so, he exposed his open download queue for a while, and apparently I was the only one who noticed it.
A torrent downloaded for [Milf Hunter] Angelica Sin 2.wmv
I laughed out loud and everybody stared at me oddly. Disappointing that no one else noticed… but...
amelioration
A few days ago, I started talking more and more to an acquaintance from work. R messaged me online first, and she said she did it because she had heard that I didn’t like it at Princeton.
Truth be told, there are a lot of things about Princeton that I don’t like, and when I first got here, it was really bad. I hated it, and after a while I gave up trying to like it and just stayed in...
what i miss
Today, during dinner, as I passsed by the taco bar, I realized that if someone asked me what were some of the things I missed the most about California, I’d have a really weird answer. Barring he obvious, boring answers like friends, family, home, the weather, and the weather, I honestly think I would answer avocados.
When I was little, I used to hate the fruit (yes, its a fruit),...
Room Draw
Right now, everybody is talking about room draw. I don’t know how it works at other colleges, but everyone at Princeton is guaranteed housing and obtains it through a lottery system called Room Draw. You can draw by yourself or you can draw in groups, and your draw is scheduled based on what year you are in.
I guess it’s first necessary to explain the way the residential system works...
Stretched
There stands, in my mind, two contraptions in Harry Potter that are exceptionally awesome. The first is the pensieve, and the second is the time-turner. These days, I’ve been wishing more and more that I had the latter.
I don’t know if this is what college is going to be like for the next three and a half years, but everyday feels packed with things to do. Work. Rinse. Repeat. As the...
opportunity costs
Today, in my macroeconomics precept, my preceptor, a grad student from Brazil, explained a nuance of the rather elementary concept of opportunity cost. She said that while opportunity costs and prices were often related, they were not always the same. The example she gave was of her colleagues from Brazil who, instead of going to graduate school, had gone into the financial market and reaped large...
writer's intent
At Princeton, students are required to take a writing seminar class as part of their general education requirements. While I’ve always pondered the use of such classes - how can you truly teach someone how to write when so much of it is subjective? - my seminar seems like it will be an interesting one. It is an unrealistic expectation here for anyone to get an A in their writing sem, but at...
classroom douchebags
Though this journal is only beginning to come into being, I don’t want to just continuously write this horribly egocentric narrative of my life. Such ramblings are for biographies of people who have made their mark on the world and changed it for the better. And for now, I am nobody.
I believe strongly in the notion that you can learn more about a person’s character in the way he...
how i got here
While I’m still pondering the level of discretion I need to exercise - I don’t know if I should care about being identified - it still is important to lay down the prologue to the exciting story of my college experience. I’ll spare the unnecessary details and highlight the ones that while may make me identifiable, are nonetheless essential for an understanding of who I am. I was...