Well, Thanksgiving break was rather uneventful. A lot of eating and sleeping involved. Went to Osaka twice, had steak/roast twice, turkey... good stuff. I think this is the first year that we've cooked turkey ourselves and not had it taste horrible, haha- quite an accomplishment.

I finally got a haircut- my first one since like July-ish, thus ending my experiment with long hair. Yea, as cool as it may be in Japan, the hair over my ears was just getting irritating. Anyways, I decided to get kinda creative with the hairdo again. I cut the back short, but kept the sideburns area long- I was going for something like Sasuke (a la Naruto) but it turned out more like Hinata. =/ But yea, I was discussing with a friend, and it seems like Chinese people as a whole just can't grow decent sideburns. I just can't get the Elvis thing going on- the porkchops? yea... can't do it. Same goes for facial hair: I wish I could grow a decent goatee. =/

I did a little bit of shopping the day after Thanksgiving- not really cuz I needed (or particularly wanted) anything, but just cuz it seemed like the proper thing to do. Well, actually, I guess I kinda wanted a Zoids model from KB Toys, but they were out by the time I got there. Bought some more winter clothes, whatever.

I watched the anime series Hellsing. Vampires are cool as hell. But the story was kinda wuh???, haha.

I went and saw the Matrix Revolutions. I liked it more than the second but less than the first. It was really heavy on the Christian symbolism though; if you can't tell Neo's supposed to be Jeebus, you're a fool. The CGI fighting was a lot better than in the 2nd though; the figures looked a lot more life-like. The 3 funniest moments in the movie: 3) when Agent Smith flies up in the air, and the lightning flashes in the background to accentuate how evil he is, 2) The slow motion shot of Agent Smith's face getting punched, with the knuckle indentions in the cheek and everything, 1) Neo: "[Trinity] you can't die!" Trinity: "Yes I can!"

Had a pretty eventful day today. Had to wake up earlier than usual to go to the senior engineering honors luncheon. Hah, man, if luck isn't on my side, this may the last one I get invited to for awhile (or possibly ever). =/ Basically, you dress up so you can have a continental breakfast, listen to some boring research presentations that you don't understand, and get a free meal catered by O's cafe. The food from O's is good stuff though, makes it all worth it to lose a Saturday morning's sleep.

After lunch, hustled back to the dorms to change, then I went to the wushu club's "mock tourney." They had some wushu clubs from Texas colleges come down to compete. Some pretty decent stuff, but nothing that completely wowed me. Anyways, I hurt my elbow throwing a straight punch while warming up, which I thought was rather ironic. I was gonna do 3 events, but I pulled out of weapon after I jacked up my elbow. The traditional category was like taking candy from a baby, despite the tremendous lack of practice on my part. And it helps when no one knows your form, so you can "freestyle" (read: pull random moves out of your butt) and no one will know the difference. I competed nanquan too though, and my lack of stamina was all too evident there. I haven't done any aerobic exercise at all this semester, and it definitely showed. I had to pull those 3+ second stylistic "poses" to regain my breath that I used to poke fun of other people for. =/ Ah well, the 1st place in traditional earned me a free meal at 888.

Also, props to Lena for lending me a scarf to use as a sash- got a lot of comments about how I shoulda gotten extra style points for that, heheh. But yea, I guess for me, there's a certain bit of ceremony in putting on a sash- it's like the equivalent of a knight putting on armor before going off to combat- it helps get me in the game mentally. Also, speaking of knights, I thought it was rather in the spirit of chivalry to be wearing a lady's colors off to "combat". Hah, don't get me wrong, chivalry is very much dead in our society, otherwise it wouldn't be nearly so amusing, haha. I dunno, in the end it probably means nothing, but it's fun to pretend every once in awhile I suppose.

Then, at night, I went to TASA hotpot night at Patrick's place. Just ate and hung out. Fun stuff.

Man, life's got me down at the moment. Thoughts about my future, what I really wanna do, etc etc. It occurred to me that I've been blindly following the path I'm on for years now without questioning. I've told myself that I wanted to be an aerospace engineer since around 6th grade or so (, by 8th grade I was "sure"). But seriously, at that age, can anyone really know what they wanna do for the rest of their life?

It's a real dilemma for me now, cuz up till now, I've always been pretty successful in my classes, and when you're doing well, what's not to like? But now, I'm getting owned in like every one of my classes, and suddenly, things aren't so fun anymore. And in the midst of all this, I'm starting to wonder: is this really what I want to do with my life? I haven't even evaluated my other options. I mean, as frufru as it may sound, what if I'd be really happy as like an art major or something, but I'll never know cuz I never even looked into it? Graaggghhh... darn this stupid engineering curriculum and its gay 12-hours-towards-your-major rule that stifles exploration into other fields. They say you're supposed to dabble around and find out what you like in college, but seriously, the engineering curriculum doesn't particularly lend itself to that... not if you wanna graduate in 4 years, at least. Hell, I'm a full year ahead from test credit, and I still feel trapped by the system.

I just hate thinking about the future these days, what I'll do after I graduate. Whereas I used to look ahead with optimism, my outlook is becoming more and more [subdued]. I'm really afraid that I'm gonna be stuck in a job I don't like- the thought haunts me like no other, keeps me up at night. I'm not looking forward to living the 9 to 5. I'm afraid that I'll be blindly working a job for years, and one day I'll stand up in a cubicle, take a look around, and just be like what the heck am I DOing??? It's like I can sense the mid-life crisis 20 years in advance. I'm scared stiff by the thought of leading an unrewarding, unfulfilling existence. They say: "Get a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." Well by goll', I never wanna have to work.

And I guess these days, I'm kind of re-ordering the priorities in my life, and I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what's important to me now. Things were so simple back in high school: grades, science fair, kung fu. But now, like half of that isn't even relevant anymore. I'm trying to figure out what matters and what doesn't. I'm trying to find a new warcry for life, the kind of stuff that makes me strive for excellence in all things. I want to be 1337 again, not just another average joe- but to do so, I need to find something that gives my accomplishments meaning, a reason to try again, a reason to be all I can be... the search for meaning continues...

"I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kinda life."
~ Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life

I just watched Where's the Party Yaar? with Rex, Maria, Zackraus, Vivek, Ashwin, Amit & co. It was funny in that way that only (pan-) Asian fobs can be, but there was a lot of small stuff that people were laughing at and I was just like wuhh?? Hah, man, I mean, I guess for the most part, I consider myself fairly down with Indian culture, but I guess I've still got a lot to learn before I can hang with the desis.

We had a surprise (pre-)birthday party for Louise tonight at Tapioca House. Fun times. Tied up some loose ends, buried the hatchet, etc etc. I think things are finally going to be back to normal. Here's to next time...

*PS: The "chicken nuggets" from Tapioca House are awesome.

I had to re-string my bracelet this past week cuz it was starting to fall apart. I dunno why, but these Buddhist prayer beads just mean a lot to me, even though I'm not really Buddhist (or if I "am," I'm not devout at all). It kinda serves vaguely as like the non-Christian equivalent of a WWJD bracelet of sorts for me, I guess. But yea, I've had the bracelet since the summer after 10th grade, so it's been about 3 years or so now. I even had a bracelet tan line for some time.

And now the bracelet was starting to come apart. I borrowed some bracelet stringing "floss" from Minnie, but I wanted the string to be red like it used to be, so I sharpied it red. Well, that didn't turn out quite as planned. The ink just kinda rubbed off on the beads and everything turned a pinkish hue. Blahhhh. Oh well, maybe I'll try it again in another 3 years.

My parents and grandpa came down to Austin this past weekend and stayed at my brother's place. I thought it was pretty funny how this time, he didn't even bother trying to hide all his alcohol bottles and whatnot. Well, at least my dad was impressed by the Crown Royal, hahaha.

But anyways, they got in late Saturday afternoon, and we had seafood for dinner- good stuff. Then after a couple obligatory hours of chilling with the parents and pretending I had no other signifcant plans for the evening, they dropped me off back at my dorm, where I promptly changed into "costume" for the Omega's Jocks & Schoolgirls party (formerly the Pimps & Hoes). I went as a prep, which they would eventually sheist me about in order to get me to buy a t-shirt. "Ballers only?" Bull... that's not what your flyer says. I dunno, I mean, I know it goes to fund the free firewater and all, and if they'd charged cover, I would gladly have paid since it was a good party, but why'd they have to give me that BS about costume being wrong? It's not like I couldn't see inside and tell that they weren't consistently enforcing the costume policy. I guess you just gotta have the right connections at the right time. ugghhh... that was the only thing that pissed me off that night.

But yea, surprisingly enough, Terry decided to come with our group. Tony had told me earlier, and I thought he was just joking, cuz seriously, Terry doesn't strike me as the partying type. He said it was to try to understand our way of life, which I guess was pretty admirable. But seriously, if you're not drinking or dancing, I don't think this kind of party would be very amusing, but to each his own, I suppose. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun. I wasn't completely gone, but it was the most satisfactorily intoxicated I've been all semester. The dancing was pretty good too. Seriously though, from my experience (last year), this is the best house party of the whole year, and I would go to great lengths to attend- hell, I went even though my parents were here, haha.

But anyways, they cut the party off at 2:00 cuz people were starting trouble. So me, Kent, Steve, and Christine went to Taco Cabana. And I was walking back to the tables with my order and I saw Kent talking to some guys, so I assumed they were friend of his and sat with them. It wasn't until like 10 minutes into our conversation that I realized that they didn't really know Kent at all, but were complete strangers just commenting about Kent's sharpied on 8-pack abs, hahaha.

So Sunday for lunch, the family (and Nien) went to Din Ho for lunch. I was pretty happy not to be hung over in front of the parents, so I guess the not getting thoroughly wasted worked out to my advantage. Anyways, lunch was really good. The parents left from there, and I came home and took a nap.

Ok, so this week has sucked horrendously. I had 3 test yesterday, and 1 today. Well, I guess Thursday's was really 2 tests and a quiz, but it sucked all the same. I had vector calc, followed immediately by spacecraft dyanamics, then a semi-pop quiz in structural analysis (announced the day before). Man, I thought I would scoob it up on the calc but bomb the spaceD, but it turned out to be quite the opposite. I got thoroughly owned in calc but did halfway decent on spaceD. But yea, that kinda pisses me off, cuz I studied a ton more for the calc. I stayed up till 5 or so on Tuesday and Wednesday night studying. I think my body is starting to rebuild the caffeine immunity it had senior year, blehhhh. Then I had a EE test this morning. I did ok I guess, considering I typed all the formulas into a program on my calculator, hahaha. Seriously, on a test, the graphing calculator is like your best friend. Why do you need a calculator for an English test? Cuz you've got a plot summary on it, hahaha. Or the answer key is just as good. Heheh, old school HD style. =P

*In other news, this new game PristonTale has replaced GunBound as my poison of choice. It's an online RPG, kinda like Ragnarok back when it used to be free. I think it's still relatively new, cuz they still have a lot of server problems, but that just means more time to play it while it's free (if not indefinitely). Fun stuff.

Man, I nearly died in weightlifting today, or at least nearly got very badly injured. I was doing squats, and my legs just gave out, quite catastrophically. And I thought my spotter would save me, cuz hell, that's what he's there for, right? But nope, I plopped butt first onto the ground. Good thing the rack had those safety bar things like 2 ft. up, otherwise I could have been seriously hurt. I walked away with only a scraped up neck. But yea, man, more than anything else, I guess it kinda just felt like a betrayal on the part of my spotter. I mean, certainly, you don't expect to need his help most of the time, but in that rare instance that you do, they darn well better be there! It's like if you're a trapeze artist, and you're perfectly fine doing your thing, cuz you've got a safety net underneath you, but what if the net doesn't save you when you need it to? Uggghhhh, dang it, I'm just pissed off at my spotter right now. GRAGGHHH...

*(11/06) Dang it, now I'm suffering from confidence problems on the squat. When I start to feel the burn in my legs, I'm reminded of my fall, and something inside starts getting afraid that it'll happen again. And there's nothing quite like fear to completely sap you of your strength. Dang it, this phobia of mine has effectively dropped my squat weight by 30lbs. Blehhhh, I hope this doesn't turn into one of those things I'll have to see a psychiatrist about one day. =/

*Had quite an interesting weekend. First, Darius, Irene, and Joyce came down from Dallas on Thursday. Went to the Union and just hung out.

On Friday, a large group of people (including the aforementioned) went to Din Ho for lunch and Red Lobster for dinner. Man, I don't get why some of my friends like Red Lobster so much... it's like a slightly more upscale version of Long John Silver's or something. But yea, dinner didn't sit particularly well. We went to Kent's place for some prepartying, but I just couldn't hold down my "firewater." I tossed my cookies twice, within a very short duration, and long before taking in enough spirits to be satisfactorily inebriated. Man, is it a sign of alcoholism to wanna get smashed so badly? Haha, but dang it, I neeeeed it, ugghh, it's been such a long week. So yea, we went down to Sixth, since it's supposedly the cool spot to be on a Halloween night, I guess. No one really dressed up with a serious costume though; D. Yeh kinda dressed up as a robber/terrorist, and Kent donned some of his pimp apparel, but that was it. But yea, maybe we just got there late or something, but I remember it being a lot more packed last year. So we went to Paradox (as usual), and we were probably only in the club for like 15 minutes before we went out and couldn't get back in without paying again. So we decide to go home, but apparently it's past 3am and the buses have stopped running. So we try hailing a cab, but they're all either full already or just plain sheisty. We ended up walking from 6th Street all the way back to campus (or Alan's place, on 27th)! It sucked horrendously. We stopped off in front of the capitol building along the way and chilled for a bit, took some incriminating photos/videos of Kent & D.Yeh, haha. But yea, by the time I got home and into bed, it was 6:30am already. Blehhh.

On Saturday, we ate at CoCo's and got drinks from the new Tapioca House two doors down. Man, seriously though, that's like an open affront, opening another pearl place so close to the leading dealer. "Them's fightin' words, pardner." But yea, CoCo's definitely could do with some price competition. Anyways, we played at the arcades for a bit, then watched Kill Bill again on computer at Steve's place. Seriously, good movies are so much better on the big screen.

Then on Sunday, after Darius & Irene left, Erika comes into town. So then me, Rex, and Alan go meet up with her at Player's and chill for a bit.

...so yea, it was a fun weekend, but completely unproductive in terms of schoolwork. I didn't get that sudden burst of working spirit/drive/urge to work that I was expecting Sunday night. Man, that means ownage later on this week, hahaha.