-donate blood(10/09/09)
-learn how to put on makeup
-RPM racing -get a job (8/26/09)
-learn how to cook
-learn how to skateboard -go clubbing (8/30/09)
-get in shape
-get ears pierced
-learn how to shoot bow/arrow
-meet the Wong Fu guys
-buy something from Puma
-learn how to do a cartwheel
-try out as AE model
-learn how to play guzheng
-eat real s'mores
-go to a comedy club
-carve a pumpkin
As you may or may not know, the UC Regents voted today at UCLA to increase tuition by 32%. Starting next school year, tuition will be $11,287. Since 2001, the cost of a UC education has increased 160%.
I walked around campus earlier today to see sights which cannot be described with words. Tents were set up a ways away from Jann Steps and protest flyers were strewn along every few feet on the fence.
"If I wanted a private education, I would've gone to USC." "WE are the crisis"' "Are you BruIN or BruOUT?"
There was even a coffin with "Education" written haphazardly across the cover. It gave me chills to see buildings closed off, cloth signs saying "OCCUPIED" and windows boarded up with not wood, but flyers protesting the tuition hikes.
After walking around campus and seeing all this, I went to the source of it all: Covel Commons. As I approached the steps entering the quad, I saw several news station vans parked with their satellites all abuzz. The steps were clogged with people. I realized that students were making a human chain-link barrier to prevent the Regents from leaving the building. The arm-linked students chanted mantras like "Whose university? OUR UNIVERSITY" and "You say cut back, we say fight back!" Bystanders lingered in the quad, whipped out cameras, video cameras, and even tripods to document the scene.
Helicopters whooshed by overhead and suddenly a great volume of people rushed to the corridor where police were barricading the inside of the fence. 2 Regents were being escorted by police out of the building. Students began screaming "Shame on You!" and "Cowards!" as the police used their batons to brusquely push students out of the way. They were coming directly into my path and I came within arm's reach of one of the Regents, a dapper, yet disgruntled-looking middle-aged woman. As more and more students pushed their way toward the police, I felt myself being moved in that direction too. They picked up speed until finally, people were outright running. The students drove the police and Regents into the nearest building, Sproul Hall, and it was there that I heard a loud bang.
A young man followed briskly alongside a police officer leaving the scene, saying "The mace wasn't necessary. That was not necessary." After I overheard that brief line, people began screaming and running from the entrance of Sproul Hall. A girl screamed in the crowd, "My eyes are burning!"
Did they set off tear gas?
This was when I decided to get myself out of there because the police were cracking down and I wasn't going to help anyone by getting tear gas in my eyes. The entire scene was tumultuous, uncivilized, and all too familiar. It is a sad day for education.
edit.8.45.pm. I talked to some other people who went to the rally. They said that burning stuff was "just mace", not tear gas. My mistake.
In light of recent events, I've been a lot more contemplative. When I'm not doing anything that demands my full attention, my mind ebbs into a thoughtful reprise, mulling over the same topics over and over. But I come to no conclusion. It's like I've come back to Square One so many times, it all looks the same. I'm thinking, but at the same time, I'm not. Thinking is supposed to get you somewhere, a lightbulb over the head, an epiphany. What's it getting me? White noise.
I think about things I have to do, then don't do them. Lament over something I did wrong, but don't correct it in the future. Scold myself, yet don't punish myself. What use is it to think when there are no results? But alas, thinking is so involuntary and mindless, it's a useless question to ask in the first place. Just another aspect of my thoughts. I feel like I want to improve myself and be a better person, but I don't take the steps to do that. I tend to give up easily, so is this like giving up without even trying? What a sad way to live.
As a child, I never paid much attention to the incessant protests of college students against the injustices of their administration. But walking to class this morning with an mp3 player in one hand and a Hot Pocket in the other, yeah, I really feel that I am a college student now.
Tomorrow and Thursday, the U.C. Regents, aka the big dogs of the University of California public school system, are voting on fee increases for the upcoming winter quarter as well as the next school year 2010-2011. For the winter quarter, tuition will increase by a margin of 14-16%, pushing tuition for the first time into the $10,000+ range. Tuition is defined as the fees required by the university from the student to be registered as a student and enroll in courses. Tuition does NOT encompass room and board, transportation, books, and other personal expenses. Library closures, furloughs for staff, and student fee increases are only some issues to be discussed by the Regents. There is talk of increasing class sizes or removing some classes altogether. Rumor has it that they may even remove English Composition as a requirement for graduation, merely because there will not be enough funding for it. Can you imagine that? A basic undergraduate college education with NO English class?
And it's not as if there are no other viable solutions. President of the U.C. Regents Mark Yudof boasts an annual salary greater than that of the President of the United States. Is that really necessary? Just look at his ridiculous interview with the New York Times:
The word “furlough,” I recently read, comes from the Dutch word “verlof,” which means permission, as in soldiers’ getting permission to take a few days off. How has it come to be a euphemism for salary cuts?
Look, I’m from West Philadelphia. My dad was an electrician. We didn’t look up stuff like this. It wasn’t part of what we did. When I was growing up we didn’t debate the finer points of what the word “furlough” meant.
What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, $400,000?
Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?
...THIS is the man at the head of some of the best schools in the country?! If you feel as strongly about this issue as I and many other UC students do, show your support. Hell, I don't even care if you're a UC student. These things command strength in numbers. Buses from Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Riverside, Irvine, and San Diego will be pouring other students into the UCLA campus for this event.
Wednesday, Nov 18 10AM - Bruin Walk 12PM - Covel Commons 5PM -Midnight Tent City and Crisis Fest
Thursday, Nov 19 8-10AM - Public Comment 12PM - Covel Commons
Something light-hearted, for a change. I feel like he's addressing me, Kimberly who lives in a dorm. [Part 1 here]
I stole a plate from the dining commons at dinner tonight. I feel so bad about stealing it, but I am staying on campus alone for four days during Thanksgiving Break when there are no dining halls or residential restaurants open - at all. I at least need something better to put my frozen microwave food on than a bunched-up pile of paper towels...that I also stole from the bathroom outside of my lecture hall. edit.10.29.pm.
My invariably twisted perspective on relationships: a stream of consciousness.
Interpretation of importance is a subjective matter. Ever-changing and fluid, what may be important now is a waste of time in the future. So for most trivial matters, they become trivial in the future, after their hot, demanding, attention-grabbing status of "important" in the present wanes and you're just left with a huge expanse of time - wasted. It's not to say that will not change either. The past is also ever-changing. What you remember now of the past can be altered when, 1 year down the line, you think it over and realize a new dimension to the frozen event in time.
In my own life, I find myself submerged in bouts of woe and destitute loneliness. The drastic change from that is startling and as equilibrium always tugs at imbalances, so too does my psyche seek to change the status of my relationships from "many" back to the equilibrium of "none". With a slow close of my eyelids, I can lament over my disturbing easiness in accomplishing this sick objective. It's too much pressure for me to maintain the respect and fulfill the high expectations that others force upon me. How am I expected to be a good person because of someone else's perception of me?
Self-deprecation is easier than holding up a big head. That is to say, pulling myself out of a pit of depression into a happy fever is more hopeful than falling from the precarious reaches of a detestable ego. Oh, how I abhor egos, and thus embrace wholly the ways of self-loathing and critical introspection. There is a method to the madness. Truly, there is. Make people realize that they hate you as much as you hate yourself. Prove them wrong, because you of all people know yourself better than they do. Leave no doubt about your very just reasons for self-deprecation. If it is self-explanatory, well you've done a good job then.
And though I shudder heavy breaths as I write these words, they still stick with me, glued into my being like the hairs on my head. I can try to tie these thoughts up and hide them out of view, ignore them for a time, try to trim them out of existence, but they will grow back zealously in unprecedented strength and number.
A relatively simple way of deterring others is much like the motion of a boomerang. Let someone come very close, only to send them flying out of your sight. The only difference? As they fly sprightly into the clear blue sky with every intention of returning faithfully to you, well that's the golden opportunity for disastrous ruin. Run away, far away until they have no motive whatsoever of pursuing you ever again. Make them want to never lay eyes on you again, because you've abandoned the process and in that same vein, abandoned them.
Another analogy is that of closeness rather than distance. Pull someone in close, so close that their skin becomes your skin. Sink into their minds and let them into yours. The exchange will be sobering but gratifying. And when your respective forms meld into one internal shared member, that's when you rip them abruptly from you like a stubborn band-aid. That not only ensures your skin, now their skin, is ripped beyond repair, but that it is no longer associated with shared property. Our, us, both, together, we. Cease to remember these words. They are now banished from your vocabulary. Do not give any thought to reconciling. You've reached a point of no return and that is why it is so very effective.
With this skewed outlook, it's no wonder I look on in incredulity at those who actually demand that my qualities be virtuous and noble. They are anything but.
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