*Today was 40 Acres Fest, the school's like annual carnival thing or whatever. It was pretty fun- lots of stuff to do. There was this human duck hunt booth where people were imitating ducks and you had to shoot 'em with a nerf gun; it was hilarious. And then there was this thing where you paid a dollar to smash a car with a sledgehammer- as many hits as you want until you're tired. It was really hard; they had this beat-up old American car that was like solid steel or something- a full -force swing barely even dented it. Yea, man, Street Fighter 2 made it look so easy... musta been a Japanese car. =P

But yea, the big closer to the day was when they had Vertical Horizon play live. I thought it was really cool. But yea, like a third of the crowd must have left after they played "Everything You Want," hahaha. Yea, they were pretty huge a couple years ago, now it seems like people don't remember who they are. Like I was asking all my friends if they wanted to go, and no one knew them.
Mike: "Vertical Horizon? Is that the mountain movie?"

*The director of Better Luck Tomorrow, Justin Lin, was on campus today talking about his movie. They played BLT: Genesis, the documentary about the making of the movie, then the director answered questions. He seemed like a really smart guy, and he's definitely not all Azn-pride or whatever. He said some thought-provoking stuff. But yea, anyways, I got him to autograph a poster for me. And as is the case with most autographs, I can't make out a single word of what he wrote, hahaha.

*Went and trained wushu for the first time in about 2 weeks or so I think. I've injured myself like the past 2 times I've gone... both in the groin, but doing different kicks. The last time was pretty bad. I think I tore the muscle that moves the leg in and out. I couldn't walk well for a couple days. Well, I got a halfway decent aerial today. I figured out that my ups are always about 50% better when I haven't trained for awhile. Weird.

So yesterday (Tuesday), SGT had another one of its faculty firesides. This time we went to a homestyle/Southern restaurant down Dean Keaton called Hoover's Cooking with Dr. Fowler. It was alright I guess. Food was pretty good, and there was a bit more conversation this time. Then, surprisingly, Dr. Fowler ends up paying the tab for the entire group. Everyone was shocked like uhhh... do we let a professor pay for us? This is weird. Cuz seriously, it musta been a couple hundred dollars at least. He's a good guy.

Anyways, we finally got back our Diff. Eq. tests that we took ages ago. Man, dang it... don't you hate it when you think you did so awesome, and then you get your test back and find out you totally sucked it up? Yea, it was like that. =/ Graggghhh... I was so confident about this Laplace stuff, I didn't bother checking my work. Stupid, stupid, STUPID! arrrggg... the A is slipping through my fingers... =/

Man, I remember when blogging used to be fun. geez... nowadays, it kinda feels like a chore. Ugghh, I guess I've got something of a love/hate relationship with blogging. I just don't feel like I've got much to say these days. I haven't written any thought provoking essays or had any deep thoughts recently.

I think the advent and popularization of Xanga has really turned me away from the concept of keeping a webjournal. Everyone and their dog has a Xanga! Psshhh... Xanga whores! =P Hah, but yea, it does seem different now that weblogging has gone mainstream. I think it kinda cheapens the experience. It used to be about being individual, being heard. It allowed you to shout your thoughts out across the web. But now, it's like you were shouting in a room, and a bunch of other people come into your room and start yelling too. And pretty soon everyone's drowning each other out and you're no longer an individual voice, you're just one of the horde... =/

So I thought there was an AIAA (aerospace group) meeting today, but I was wrong. Man, this has happened at least 3 times now. I don't know where the faulty link is in my communication chain, but I always write down in my planner that the meetings are on Mondays, and then I get to the site and find out that the meeting is on Tuesday. Blahhh...

So I went to a meeting of the Asian Engineering Society instead. I guess they were expecting a lot of people to show up or something, but nope, haha. And it was the officer election meeting too. I showed up, and I hadn't originally planned on running for an office, but I got there and it didn't look like there was very fierce competition, so I thought what the heck. So I end up getting elected the Public Relations Chair for AES. I really wanted to be the SEC rep, but no such luck. =/ But yea, public relations is still a pretty sweet gig I guess, right?

I dunno, I guess it's time to start rebuilding the resume, now that everything back in high school is irrelevant. I've just got this kinda suspicion of joining and leading clubs as a result of resume-loading back in high school. In one of the essays for Stanford (which I really wasn't very set on getting into), I wrote, "They always told us as we were going through high school, "Sign up for as many extra-curriculars as you can! Colleges love it!" I didn't find out until half way into my junior year that this was all a horrendous lie." ...now granted, I went on in that essay to clarify a bit and make my point a little more palatable, but the general idea remains: I feel I was tricked into participating in a bunch of extra-curriculars that I honestly had no interest in, just cuz I thought it'd look good on a resume. But in the end, none of that helped- I'm still at UT, regardless of my efforts. And I guess it's a fear that it'll be the same thing here at UT that gets me. =/

I finally got around to getting myself a haircut today. Yesterday, class was cancelled in the afternoon, so getting a haircut was the only thing on my agenda for the day... yet I failed, haha. By the time I finally got my act together to go to the haircutting place, it was closed already. So I went today. My hair got butchered, hahaha. Man, I never seem to learn... but yea, I just can't pass up the bargain of a $6.99 haircut, hahaha.

I went and worked out with Kent this afternoon too. I think it's only my second time working out this semester. Man, I've gotten so weak. I took about week and a half off from all exercise so that my bruised arm could heal, and everything just went to heck. Not working out for ages, coupled with some recent weight gain (my freshman 15 put me over the 200 mark =/), I no longer have the bragging-right of being able to bench (considerably) more than my body weight. Blah, suxorz... gotta get it back in gear.

Afterwards, I went to a steak restaurant with my brother and his friends since it was his roommate's birthday. We went to Austin Land & Cattle, which turned out to be pretty good, actually. I haven't had steak in Austin all semester, I think. It was great. I ate to my heart's content, haha.

Sigma Gamma Tau had the first of its "faculty firesides," where a group of students goes to a professor's house for dinner and just chills. This time we went to Dr. Liechti's place. It was pretty cool, but I probably woulda appreciated it more if I'd taken classes from him before. There were a bunch of awkward silences- I dunno, I think it's kinda hard to just strike up conversation in that student-professor kind of relationship. =/ Maybe that's just engineers' personality. Well, anyways, Dr. Liechti played the bagpipes for us, which was pretty cool- I'd never heard 'em played live before. And I learned that there really did have a class called underwater basketweaving, ahahaha.

Man, you know you're getting a little chunky when even your JNCO's feel a little snug. I've just lost all motivation in my life this year I think. I've got no motivation to exercise, resulting in FAT and the freshman 15. I've got no motivation to study (which may be lingering effects of senioritis). I've got no motivation to make myself look presentable- I stopped doing my hair (which would have been unthinkable for me in high school), and I go around in pajamas for half the day. Hell, I've even lost the motivation to update my blog in a timely manner- I let the temp entries pile up for a week+ before I get my act together to fill in the blanks.

I dunno, I guess laziness and lack of definite goals or desires are what have caused this downward spiral... Man, I gotta get myself motivated again like ASAP ...enhh, I'll get around to it, hahaha.

Our school newspaper, The Daily Texan, recently published a front-page article about how Asian Americans are "untouched by affirmative action." Basically, it was saying how percentage-wise, there are a lot more Asians at UT than there are in the state. It pointed out that if affirmative action were reintroduced into Texas schools, Asians would suffer cuz their seats would be given to other minorities.

Let me take a time out now to say that I think affirmative action is fundamentally wrong. Slavery ended a over a century ago; Jim Crow ended half a century ago... how long are we gonna pretend we owe people for past discriminations? Yea, ok, we were wrong to segregate in the past, but this reverse segregation we call affirmative action isn't making things any "more equal" - two wrongs don't make a right. It may have been necessary immediately after the fall of the Jim Crow era, but it has outlived its usefulness. The fact of affirmative action is that it leads to less qualified people getting jobs solely on the basis of their race. It's a double standard- if you give a black person preference, it's affirmative action; if you give a white person preference, it's discrimination.
I dunno, I mean, I recognize that there are very different ways of looking at this issue, depending on whether you're the one benefiting or hurting. And my view is probably a little skewed by the fact that I think I was shafted in college admissions cuz I'm an Asian American male. I bash affirmative action cuz I'm only familiar with it in terms of college admissions; I haven't witnessed the social environment in the workplace and the fabled "glass ceiling," so I can't speak about that... Man, there's like a zillion tangents I could go off on from this, but no time...

But yea, anyways, I pointed out the Daily Texan article cuz they interviewed me for it, and included this whole spiel about my accomplishments and whatnot... and then they proceed to get my name wrong. According to The Daily Texan, I'm 'Chun Tien "Daniel" Huang,' hahaha- it managed to cause a lot of confusion among people I knew who read the article. (Note: my name includes neither "Chun Tien" nor "Huang") Man, I recall even spelling out my last name for the interviewer, and they STILL managed to get it wrong... They probably searched the directory with "Huang" and pulled up the closest thing. And they paraphrased what I said to them a bunch... like I was saying how people who don't get into better schools use UT as a safety school cuz of the top 10% rule. Seriously... it's no mystery that half the Asians come to UT as their safety school or just cuz it's a sure thing... money's only the half of it.

Sigma Gamma Tau, the aerospace honors organization, held a (mandatory) scavenger hunt today. I thought it'd be really gay, but it turned out to be pretty fun. It was really more doing odd tasks than finding things. Her are some of the weirder, more interesting things we did: eat a box of saltine crackers (as a team) in 3 minutes and eat a slice of bread in 30 seconds both without any water, leapfrog across a busy street, pull a Chinese firedrill on a busy street, make a human pyramid in front of the capital building, "ride" horse statues on campus, ask out a random girl by first serenading her with "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" (a la Top Gun), asking to get a room at a fancy hotel for only one hour, ask to join a sorority (even though our entire team was guys), punch in our own order at a fast food restaurant (Wendy's), ask a random person for a sip of their drink, and some other stuff I can't remember. I thought it was really hilarious. It made me realize how much more willing you are to do crazy stuff when you have a camera with you. The camera is both the reason and the justification for doing stuff- like people'll give you weird looks, but then you can say that you're making a movie, and everything's cool... kinda, hahah. Other people thought it was all part of some frat hazing, haha. But yea, I realized that if ever there's a time in your life to mess around and do wacky stuff, it's definitely while you're at college- people just seem a whole lot more accepting or tolerant of absurd behavior at this age and in this environment.

...and on my way home, I saw a bird fighting a squirrel. The squirrel lost and ran away under a car, hahaha.

*Saturday evening, I went to see Texas Revue, the UT-wide talent show. Pretty good, I must say.

Man, I donated blood this last Tuesday, and usually things go perfectly smoothly, but this time, I've developed this humongous bruise on my bicep. I probably shoulda known something was up when I got dizzy afterwards- that usually doesn't happen either. And my arm gets numb/tingly whenever I exercise. Weird.

*On Thursday night, I watched a performance of Shen Wei Dance Arts- the Engineering Honors Council footed the bill. It was.... [weird]. I thought it'd be like a ballet or something, but it was more abstract... like an interpretive dance of some sort. No discernible storyline or definite theme- everything was very ambiguous and open to audience interpretation. There were "dances" to two pieces of music, the first of which was Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. This one was really bizarre... I kept thinking ok, any minute now, they'll pull it all together and everything will make sense... nope. When it finished, I honestly had no idea what I'd just watched. It was really wild and frenetic, but I guess it was vaguely fitting cuz The Rite of Spring is a pretty wack piece of music anyways. The second act was a little bit more cohesive, but also had no intelligible plot of any sort. It was an original piece title Folding, and it had something of an Asian motif. I really liked this piece; it was like a visual expression of something very deep from the soul that words cannot describe- the imagery was just really captivating. It was like watching a sculpture coming to life to further its power of expression. The color scheming for both acts was beautiful- the first with monochrome shades of grey/black/white, the second with bold hues in contrast with a color-changing backdrop... very painting-like. I really don't know if I'd recommend this show or not- after it finished, part of me hated it and part of me loved it, a hard feeling to describe.

Sigma Gamma Tau, the aerospace honors organization, held an event at the RLM observatory tonight. We went and looked at the stars from the roof, occasionally aided by telescope. It was a better view than I usually get from the ground, but it still wasn't dark enough to see extremely well. I thought about it and I realized that I haven't really been able to see stars anywhere I've lived since 4th grade. I think I used to be able to see them from my old house in Dallas, but I can't remember for sure- too young. But yea, then I moved to Plano and lived next to Carpenter Field, and they'd have those massive stadium style lights on at night. Similar story here in Austin, I guess. All that ambient light- I guess that's the penalty you pay for living near civilization, hahah.

But yea, I hate how organizations have all these things you have to do for "initiation." I mean, even if they are fun activities, the fact that you have to do it kinda takes away from the experience.

*So I had a Diff. Eq. test on Tuesday that I crammed all of Monday night for. I ended up doing better than I expected. I think for the first time in this course, I feel like I really understand something: the Laplace transformation. And I was doing a problem for one of my aerospace classes yesterday night, and I actually used Laplace transformations... I was so proud of myself, hahaha. But yea, I guess I'm having a lot of trouble in Diff. Eq. cuz I'm not seeing the direct applications of the material. Like taking Calc BC at the same time as Physics C in high school really put things into perspective, like oooooooohh, I get it, THAT's why you need the derivative and the integral! Yea, but the same isn't true anymore. In fact, my professor specifically basically said, "I'll NEVER show you any application problems related to your majors. You'll get plenty of that in classes later." But it sucks, cuz for now I've got very little incentive to remember stuff. =/ Suxorz.

So I stayed up late (till like 5:00) cramming for my mechanics of solids test today. The test was at 8:00... and I woke up at 8:40! The first thought that went through my mind was omfg!!! WhyyYyYYYyyy!?!?! Then I sat in bed for like 30 seconds panicking, thinking about which illness to fake (or induce), or if I could break one of my fingers to go to the nurse or something. Then I was like, whatever, I'll just go there and beg the professor for mercy! So I ran to class and got there with like 10 minutes left, and the professor was just like, "Ok, see what you can do in 10 minutes." So I was scrawling down numbers & equations as fast as I could. Then the professor walks up to me and says I can stay after, and I was just like, "thank you! Thank you sooooo much!" I ended up finishing in like 25 minutes cuz I'd done the first part of it in such a hurry. But yea, I was just so thankful that he gave me extra time. So yea, let it be known that Dr. Ravi-Chandar is the greatest, most benevolent professor ever! That deserves like an award or something.

*I wrote him a thank you e-mail afterwards. Anyways, yea, the moral of the story? Set TWO alarm clocks on test days.

We lost! =(

I went with my brother to Patrick's place for a bbq and to watch the basketball game. Well, then the Longhorns lost, and everyone was depressed. =/ Man, they said it's been 50 years since we've been in the Final Four, and then nothing. I dunno, I was never really a big fan of college basketball before- I didn't see what the big deal about it was. It's not until you get to college and have a specific team to root for that you really get into it. And it really helps if the team you're supposed to cheer for is actually any good. But yea, I really had a good bit of team spirit with this basketball team; I haven't been this disappointed in a team's defeat since the Stars lost the Stanley Cup. blaahhh.

*After the game, to relieve some frustration, I went to the arcades to shoot some (virtual) people up... very therapeutic.

I volunteered to work at an archery tournament today (for bonus credit in my PE class). I woke up early and everything, only to realize that the buses don't run on Saturdays. Suckage! So I had to go borrow the car from my brother to get to the site. Well, I got pretty lost, and by the time I finally got there, I was like over an hour late, haha. But I offered to stay late, so it worked out okay. Man, I didn't think I was outdoors for that long, but I still managed to get a sunburn. =( And I had my bracelet (Buddhist prayer beads) on, so now I'm gonna have like a watch tan! arrrrrrggggg, hahaha. But yea, I generally don't like getting a tan- it requires to much uncomfortable sunlight and heat. So I usually prefer to stay a shade of nice, pasty white, hahaha.

*And since the start of the war, I've been wanting to get a different angle on what's happening. Everyone knows the popular American media is biased as hell, so I decided to give BBC a try, but I didn't really like it. How ironic that all the major English speaking countries seem to be lined up on the same side of the issue. So yea, I decided to check out Al Jazeera's English site. And I'm sure it's got bias in the other direction- it really portrays the war in a much more negative light. But yea, I guess it balances out all the positive stuff I get from the mainstream US news.

Went to train wushu tonight since I've been to busy to go during my normal times (Sunday & Wednesday). I think this is the first time I've trained on a Friday. And it'll probably be my last- the class was soooo abyssmally boring today. I don't know what was lacking, but it just wasn't fun at all. And I think I hurt my groin doing a jump outside. Well, being bored out of my mind, I left early to go work out- my first time working out all semester.

Afterwards, I went to the Silk Mangos "Big Show." The Silk Mangos are the resident Asian American theatre troupe. I thought the show was gonna just be a bunch of comedy sketches, but I was pleasantly surprised. In addition to the oddball stuff, they addressed several issues regarding cultural identity, racial history, and equality- oftentimes it was funny, but with a point, a moral. It was a good show.

Later on, as I was going home, I had my hands full with a bunch of trash, and had just swiped into my dorm. And I was tossing all the junk in my hands into the garbage can and accidentally tossed my ID card too! I had to fish it out of the trashcan... naaaaaaaaaasty!

I've been kicked out of my room all week around 1 in the morning. It seems that's the new policy of our room. I'm so sick of arguing, I'm just like alright, whatever, I don't care anymore. Nien just says, "Yea, hey, can you take it ouside?" And that's my cue to scram! =/ Enhhh... it's not so bad this semester I guess- they opened up the lab in Carothers 24 hours, so I don't have to leave the building (complex) to get on a computer anymore.

But yea, at times, it still feels a little sheisty not being able to do stuff in your own room. So tonight I went to the Andrews study lounge to do some hw, and met up with H-town Daniel and Yilin. It was brought to our attention that we all share this same problem: roommates who sleep early and fuss at us. H-town Daniel christened the group the "Midnight Snack Club"... you know, kinda like the Breakfast Club? yea, haha... well, I thought it was amusing anyways. We ordered pizza at like 3 in the morning and drank exorbitant amounts of soy milk. Yea, things get crazy in the wee hours of the morning.

But you know, it's weird, when we were ordering pizza, we all argued over who would pay the bill. And it wasn't over who had to pay, it was who had the privilege of paying. It's funny, when I was young, I thought it was the silliest thing ever when my parents and their friends would argue about who got to pay, and now here I am doing the same thing. And I dunno, I don't think it's really to show off how rich I am more than just trying to be good to my friends. I always joke that "it's all in the tribe," (as if we were the Cherokee Nation or something)- kinda just meaning that it's all between friends or something. But yea, I mean, here at school, money honestly is no object for me- I'm raking it in with the scholarships right now, and I really don't have anything to spend it on- so why not splurge a little when I have the chance? Share the wealth. Trickle-down economics... the whole kit & kaboodle.

So I finally went to bed at around 6 in the morning. I was rather shocked that it was daybreak already. Wow, I think that's the first time I've come close to staying up all night since coming to college.