I'm still up researching and writing my paper for Advertising. I am hoping to finish this paper tonight, or even perhaps in the morning, so I can participate fully in the protests that is happening TODAY all across California on UC campuses. I've recently heard that community college is also hurt and De Anza College in Cupertino has thousands of students not being able to add classes they want and need. This shit is crazy.
Reflecting on what I've been going through in college, I'm very grateful to be in a time period like this: the first person of color/mixed race person to become president and being in Berkeley to witness the mass reveling on the streets and this mass protest movement that is happening today all over the UCs. I find it incredibly unfair to take so much money away from education in a time like this especially when education is the basis for our social structure and the underserved's mobility. 3% of the state budget is cut, and 30% is cut from education. Tuition is raised from $6,000 to $10,000 which ironically shows that public education is slowly becoming privatized.
Sorry, but after years of struggle, movements and fight for civil rights from many people, it is again overturned even more with something like this. Sorry, but the door for college is gonna be shut for a lot more people like people of color and immigrants. Sorry, it's not gonna happen. You tell me if this is democracy when more people are going to become more disenfranchised because. You tell me if it's fair to slowly move into segregation AGAIN.
War - The World is a Ghetto
this may be true, if education is only accessible to a few, and barred off from many.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Curse and Gift of Thinking Hard
Sometimes, I refer myself as a Hamlet, that character in that Shakespearean play who overanalyzes his situations so much that he becomes caught in the web of his thinking. He is literally a victim of his own cognitive spider. When I first read, or rather sparknoted, that play in my senior year of high school, the dimensions of his character spoke so much the dimensions of my own character, or at least my interpretation of it.
Something I might wanna on this year since this is my last real year here is at CAL is to "take things as it is" (as quoted by Voltaire from my APALI internship this year) sometimes. My human relationships are on the line and I really want to make the people around me happy and myself happy. I know there will be a lot of fluctuations throughout this year, but it really all depends on how I approach it.
Something I might wanna on this year since this is my last real year here is at CAL is to "take things as it is" (as quoted by Voltaire from my APALI internship this year) sometimes. My human relationships are on the line and I really want to make the people around me happy and myself happy. I know there will be a lot of fluctuations throughout this year, but it really all depends on how I approach it.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Stuck In The Attic
I feel like Anne Frank,
not hiding from the Nazis,
but from the Future.
I am hiding in the attic
in the Past.
How dusty everything and
I am chained to the hands
of this clock.
I feel like puking out
what money had to buy
the shores of my
own desires.
not hiding from the Nazis,
but from the Future.
I am hiding in the attic
in the Past.
How dusty everything and
I am chained to the hands
of this clock.
I feel like puking out
what money had to buy
the shores of my
own desires.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Berkeley Jerkers in LA
Recap:
-LA trip was so much fun. It's a whole different experience when you are going with your friends instead of your family. Although LA looks beautiful in its plasticky, intentional, and rhetorical way, I am still proud to be at CAL in spite of its urbanness, cloudiness, grayness. Like the rose that grew out of concrete, which 2pac used as an allegory in many of his works, beauty CAN come from something so ugly and that is Berkeley and its revolutionary way of thinking.
Check out the Berkeley Jerkers!!
-LA trip was so much fun. It's a whole different experience when you are going with your friends instead of your family. Although LA looks beautiful in its plasticky, intentional, and rhetorical way, I am still proud to be at CAL in spite of its urbanness, cloudiness, grayness. Like the rose that grew out of concrete, which 2pac used as an allegory in many of his works, beauty CAN come from something so ugly and that is Berkeley and its revolutionary way of thinking.
Check out the Berkeley Jerkers!!
Passed in the Past
It's 5 AM and I still do not know why I'm still awake. I suppose I've gotten so past the sleepy stage that I am now wide awake.
Recap:
-APALI 2009 was definitely a revolutionary year. I am so grateful to have been an intern for this year. No regrets.
-I was able to pass Astronomy class with an astonishing grade of a C+ with little to no effort put into studying for the tests and giving my attention in class. I really disliked the professor who was incredibly condescending and self-righteous towards his students. Screw that guy! I could not stop thinking about how he looks so much like Plato/Aristotle and Santa Claus.
- <3
-I am disappointed that I was not able to catch up with more old friends. I have to keep on reminding myself not to get so caught up in me and my own little world that I create under the circumstances I am in.
Lately, I've been thinking about how and where I fall within the time continuum of space and time (philosphical isn't it?). I've thinking a lot about my past obsessions with computers and technology, especially back in middle school, aka the Counter-Strike days. The days of anime, AzN PryDe along with growing popularity of AzN youth typing in "hip" sticky-capped internet ebonic langauge, searching and experiementations with identity.
I felt back then I was truly ahead of my time in terms of my expertise with computers. I had truly thought that I was going to be a computer engineer or computer programmer until my parents told me my "element", which is wood, was not compatible with steel, which in this respect is associated with computers. I remember helping all my friends with their computer hardware and software problems in person as well as on forums such as viaarena.com and tomshadware.com. I was proud that I had knowledge many did not have since during this time, not many people had computers. This was a time before myspace and facebook while xanga and blogs were gaining a lot of popularity. I was so proud to be a computer geek or nerd. I felt I was ahead of my time relative to the friends I had who did not have access to the type of computing langauge I had.
But now.. I feel like I'm still stuck in 2001. I often get surprised of how "mainstream" internet langauge is nowadays: LOL, LMFAO, OMG can be heard in songs and tv shows. Programs are made so user-friendly nowadays that I feel a lack of independence and control to how I used to feel about using programs from back then. Webpages do not have to be self-coded in HTML anymore. Pirating movies is not just limited to IRC anymore, but can be downloaded and watched on streaming sites and torrents. In many respects, I feel like how my computer is everyday--always becoming obsolete with each second that passes.
I feel like the world that I am an insider, yet outsider in is moving so fast like the skinny kids in my PE class mile-runs that my chubby self cannot keep up with their ever fast times. I'm always a few laps behind. Clocks have hands, but will never give you a helping hand because even when you are behind, it will keep on moving, ticking and tocking, without you.
Recap:
-APALI 2009 was definitely a revolutionary year. I am so grateful to have been an intern for this year. No regrets.
-I was able to pass Astronomy class with an astonishing grade of a C+ with little to no effort put into studying for the tests and giving my attention in class. I really disliked the professor who was incredibly condescending and self-righteous towards his students. Screw that guy! I could not stop thinking about how he looks so much like Plato/Aristotle and Santa Claus.
- <3
-I am disappointed that I was not able to catch up with more old friends. I have to keep on reminding myself not to get so caught up in me and my own little world that I create under the circumstances I am in.
Lately, I've been thinking about how and where I fall within the time continuum of space and time (philosphical isn't it?). I've thinking a lot about my past obsessions with computers and technology, especially back in middle school, aka the Counter-Strike days. The days of anime, AzN PryDe along with growing popularity of AzN youth typing in "hip" sticky-capped internet ebonic langauge, searching and experiementations with identity.
I felt back then I was truly ahead of my time in terms of my expertise with computers. I had truly thought that I was going to be a computer engineer or computer programmer until my parents told me my "element", which is wood, was not compatible with steel, which in this respect is associated with computers. I remember helping all my friends with their computer hardware and software problems in person as well as on forums such as viaarena.com and tomshadware.com. I was proud that I had knowledge many did not have since during this time, not many people had computers. This was a time before myspace and facebook while xanga and blogs were gaining a lot of popularity. I was so proud to be a computer geek or nerd. I felt I was ahead of my time relative to the friends I had who did not have access to the type of computing langauge I had.
But now.. I feel like I'm still stuck in 2001. I often get surprised of how "mainstream" internet langauge is nowadays: LOL, LMFAO, OMG can be heard in songs and tv shows. Programs are made so user-friendly nowadays that I feel a lack of independence and control to how I used to feel about using programs from back then. Webpages do not have to be self-coded in HTML anymore. Pirating movies is not just limited to IRC anymore, but can be downloaded and watched on streaming sites and torrents. In many respects, I feel like how my computer is everyday--always becoming obsolete with each second that passes.
I feel like the world that I am an insider, yet outsider in is moving so fast like the skinny kids in my PE class mile-runs that my chubby self cannot keep up with their ever fast times. I'm always a few laps behind. Clocks have hands, but will never give you a helping hand because even when you are behind, it will keep on moving, ticking and tocking, without you.
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