Zhang Hui, the wushu wonder, came down to UT this afternoon from New Mexico. They had us meet at the Belmont freaking early, and we (me & Michael) just sat around for the entire morning, haha. Then we had lunch at EZ's, which was pretty good stuff, but I didn't know you could get a student discount by showing your ID, so I got jacked. Anyways, we head back to the stadium around 2ish, but not before getting a bunch of honey BBQ wings from KFC. We trained for a couple hours before downing the wings as a "halftime." Mostly just trained basics and reviewed a little bit of the changquan compulsory form. Finished training around 6ish; everyone was tired as hell. Went to pho afterwards, and now it's off to TASA mahjong night.

I just had another wholly unproductive night at the library. Man, I just can't seem to work until the deadline is right upon me- dangerously close. I was talking with Tony, and I realized it's kinda like in Naruto, how he has to experience danger or intense emotion to channel Kyubi's red chakra that's supremely powerful. I gotta feel that impending sense of grade beefstick before I can tap into my deeper levels of intellect (and BS). So yea, I guess that means I ought to undergo some near-beefstick training in the Jiraiya-style to learn the feeling so I can call upon my "powers" at any time. Heheh, seriously though, I know I can do my assignments when I buckle down and rely on noose effect, but I really need to learn how to work productively when the pressure's not on.

Me, Michael, Rex, Pearl, and Christine went to Din Ho yesterday for dinner to celebrate the Chinese New Year. It was good as always. After that, we rented a movie, May, from Blockbuster. The movie just gives you this creepy vibe from start to finish cuz the protagonist is just so weird. The human chopping didn't bother me so much, but the reassembly was pretty disturbing. And the very final scene- I don't wanna ruin it, but OMG, it was sooooo freaky. I was screaming for literally 10+ seconds after the credits started rolling. Yea, it makes you all suspicious of quiet girls, kinda like Audition. "I like your hands." hahahah, freaky.

*So I was walking down the drag after buying $6.99 worth of stuff from Eckerd's, so I had one cent in my pocket. And a hobo asks me if I have any change. So I search around, and all I come up with is the penny, and I hand it towards her. And she says, "Sorry, I don't accept pennies. Do you have anything else?" And I'm like omg, since when did hobos get so picky??? I mean seriously, beggars can't be choosers, right? Man, what's the world coming to?

So Bush announced some time back that he's calling for a return to the moon and a human voyage to Mars. To accomplish this, he's giving NASA another $1 billion. Now at first glance, it might seem like this is all a very good thing. But when you start reading the fine print, it really seems like this is all a sham. Seriously, in space exploration terms, $1 billion is chump change... try like 100 times if you seriously want to get people to Mars or even back to the moon.

They said that another $14 billion of NASA's current budget should be reallocated for this goal as well. That kills off a lot of other programs (i.e. Hubble) without putting us that much closer to Mars. To fund all this will probably require the scrapping of the space shuttle fleet and pulling out of our International Space Station commitments. Now, I think it's high time the space shuttles were replaced, but not till the replacement is in sight. And I think pulling out of the ISS is just a plain waste.

Now don't get me wrong, I think it's important that humans go to Mars- eventually. I don't think we're quite there yet. Without means to fund any of this, various items within NASA will probably get axed to pursue this goal. So actually, this whole talk of going to Mars seems like nothing more than a subtle ploy to kill off large parts of the space program. And all the while, Bush comes off looking like a hero for making a Kennedy-esque call for human space exploration. If they were serious about going to Mars, they should put their money where their mouth is.

*Budget estimate coming out soon... I'm curious to see how they intend to pay for this.

So today in one of my engineering classes, the professor had us brainstorm a list of engineering disasters/failures. Some of the stuff we listed included: Chernobyl, Challenger/Columbia, Titanic, Firestone tires, Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Anyways, after the exercise, the professor then said something like: "When a doctor messes up, it only kills one person. When an engineer messes up, we kill a LOT of people... therefore, pay attention in your classes!" Hah, I thought that was a rather humorous way to reiterate a pretty simple point.

*I came back to UT on Wednesday. blehhhh... not exactly looking forward to starting school again. Haven't really been doing much since my return. Mostly just been sleeping in and bumming around. Started playing Diablo 2 and GunBound again; dunno how long I'll stick with it though. Hung out with YiLin a couple times. Paid my first visit to the Barnes & Noble on the Drag ever (to read graphic novels, of course). I bought my textbooks- probably the most productive thing I've done. Man, it's always so depressing looking inside the books and seeing for the first time how obscure & complex the material looks. And it's even more depressing when you flip back to the cover and see the word "Fundamentals"; it's like, as hard as this is, you're still just scratching the surface. *sigh* The harsh realization that you're still just a n00b. =/

So here's my schedule for this semester:
M340L - Matrices/Matrix Calculations (Linear Algebra)-Hon.; MWF 10-11
ACC310F - Foundations of Accounting; MW 12:30-2P
ME326 - Thermodynamics; MWF 2-3P, W 3-4P
ASE120K - Applications of Fluid Mechs.; M 3-4P
ASE320 - Intro to Fluid Mechanics; TTH 9:30-11
ASE365 - Structural Dynamics; TTH 12:30-2P
PED103L - Beginning Ballroom Dance - Men; T 6:30-9:30P

**Man, I spilled soup on my keyboard, and it dripped into the gaps between the keys. Blarggg... I managed to clean most of it out, but there's still some residue in there. Man, I hope it doesn't affect the typing. =/

My family went to Fogo de Chao for dinner tonight. It's another one of those Brazilian meat-on-swords restaurants. It was good stuff, but I think I still prefer Texas de Brazil. A very expensive meal, but well worth it for the amount of meat I ate, heheh.

I finally finished up The Da Vinci Code. It was sooo good. Probably the best book I've read these past couple years. I stayed up till 5 or 6 in the morning several times reading (since I read frickin' slow). The suspense just makes you wanna keep reading and reading. But yea, the story is interspersed with a bunch of random factoids about art/religion/history that I found really interesting/enlightening. And it points out stuff in some of Da Vinci's art that's just like whoooaaaa... never notice THAT before! Oh yea, and I actually managed to solve the second puzzle in the story before I read it- I was quite proud of myself. =P

*I went and saw In America at the Magnolia. It's the story of an Irish family that comes to America to forget about a family tragedy- starting over emotionally. And you just realy empathize with the characters in their economic & emotional plight. It's really sad; like half of the audience was crying at the end. Very good though. Man, indie films are just so subtle & quaint in a way that Hollywood movies can rarely emulate.

Me, Michael, and Rex went over to Erika's place tonight to chill. After watching some tv, we decided to go to Blockbuster's, but apparently it's impossible to decide on a movie when there's too many people that have to agree on the selection. So our movie run turned into a food run. There had been a KFC commercial on tv just before we left the house, so I had a craving for fried chicken. We went to the nearby Kroger, but as we walked in, my craving for chicken subsided and was replaced by a craving for pepperoni. I really just wanted pepperoni, but it seemed like a fun (and slightly more nutritional) idea to make a pizza. So we bought sauce, cheese, dough, and a hell of a lot of pepperonis.

There were way too many pepperonis in the bag for a pizza of that size though. But not wanting to let 'em go to waste, we decided to pile them all onto the pizza. It must have been like 3 or 4 layers of pepperoni on any given part of the pizza. It was so hossly. I was in great anticipation as it baked in the oven. When we pulled the pizza out, we had a good laugh at how much grease had dripped off. Still anticipating. We all took one bite out of our slices and were like omg, this is nasty! Haha, it proved to be too beastly to handle. Not wanting to appear weak, I took a couple more bites, but I too was eventually beaten by the pizza: Pizza- 1, Us- 0.

We picked off the pepperonis and were gonna feed it to a neighborhood dog, but we couldn't find any that seemed promising. We ended up spelling the word "TASTY!" out of pepperonis in an alleyway. I was quite amused. Man, we always seem to make the dumbest fun back here in Plano, haha.

The ski trip was pretty fun I guess. Same ol', same ol'. We go every year; family tradition, I guess- pretty uneventful.

During the trip, I finished up reading Watchmen. It touched on a lot of themes/questions I thought were really interesting & thought-provoking: "heroes" of questionable moral character, the philosophy of fate/predestination, whether ends justify the means, the (lack of) need for superheroes in the absence of supervillains, why anyone would want to be a masked crimefighter, the (il)legality of vigilantism, the obsolescence of unpowered heroes (e.g. Batman) in light of heroes with superpowers (e.g. Superman), etc. The story's slightly less relavent nowadays, but back in the Cold War days, this book musta been absolutely stunning. This is seriously the [deepest] graphic novel I've ever read. The storytelling is great- it more than makes up for the old school art style that I'm not a big fan of. I highly recommend it.

I also started reading The Da Vinci Code during the trip. Now, I'm usually not that keen on the thriller/mystery genre, but omg, this book has got me so glued, hahaha. Seriously, this has been the most "fun" I've had reading a book in a long time. My brother bought the book (I think) and read the whole thing in like a day, which is completely unprecedented cuz I can't even remember the last time I saw him doing pleasure reading (if ever). It's that good, man. I'll write more about it when I finish reading.

going skiing, be back around the 9th-ish

*So, let's see what stuff I've done recently...

I've been to Barnes & Noble and Borders several times this break to read manga and graphic novels. Read the first 4 books of the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" manga series. It's supposedly based on the original novels, just like the movie, so it's kinda like getting the backstory behind the movie, I guess. Read the first part of Watchmen in the store and liked it so much I decided to buy it. It's a classic in the world of comics, I hear. But yea, I'll talk more about this one when I finish it.

Started and finished playing Grim Fandango. It's a computer game that's roughly similar to Monkey Island. Bought it a couple years ago off the discount rack and never got around to playing it till now. According to the cd case, it's an "epic tale of crime and corruption in the land of the dead." That sounds about right. Anyways, I thought the story was quite entertaining, and that's how I typically judge games of this nature. But yea, I'd never be able to beat it without a walkthrough- thank goodness for gamefaqs.com, haha

Went to GameWorks at Grapevine Mills. Leeching off the unlimited play for ladies, mwahaha. Played pool & pingpong at UTD with friends.

Movies watched recently: Love Actually, Underworld, Big Fish, Brother Bear. In order of how much I liked them. Love Actually was as good as I'd heard; very lighthearted and funny. I found Underworld surprisingly entertaining, despite the bad reviews- probably proving once again that I've got bad taste in movies, hahaha. Big Fish was alright I guess, a little happy and a little sad at the same time, but not as trippy as the commercials made it out to be. And Brother Bear is typical Disney fare. But yea, they've been showing that Coke commercial with Delux_247 before all the movies, and I laugh every single time. "Now, when your career starts popping off, it's mandatory you get the nice rims(?). Now, I'm not about being all flashy, but when I saw these, I was like, 'these are all me son.' *spin*" ~Delux_247

New Year's was pretty whatever. Went to Erika's place to watch tv, then over to Michael's sisters for more tv and some firewater. That's about it; left around 7 in the morning. Ok, I don't usually like to make New Year's resolutions, cuz "resolution" is such a strong word, that I know deep down I probably can't follow up on. So how about let's call 'em "wishes for the nigh-impossible"?

New Year's wishes for the nigh-impossible:
-find myself
-seal the deal or find another offer
-stop regretting past actions/inactions
-stop spending cash like it's water
-take school seriously 3 nights a week instead of only one
-get more cut
-make some friends in the aerospace dept.
-curb my racism, haha