cannot believe that i actually stayed up all night watching dvd and did nothing all of yesterday though i have a midterm for econ 100b next wed!! =( oh well.... nmind. but i had fun yesterday =) though it was like a domestic-chore day. had our routine outing to ranch to shop for groceries but an unprecedented way of getting there! which made me realize how unhealthy i was... constantly lagging behind shiyun, full of stamina and jogged without stopping to ranch... then bought groceries and a new pan at ROSS since our old pan finally 'gave way'.... yup and cooked dinner at our place, shiying cooked kailan with carrots, ziyang his combination egg, chester his not-on-purpose peppery but still savoury chicken stew and my experiment soy-sauce fried fish fillets which turned out pretty ok.... thank goodness =P it was a nice dinner, considering how all of us haven't exactly been eating together for some time, as everyone's usually busy during the week and thus confined to their individual households...
after dinner activity was so singaporean! haha we watched star search and the new chinese tcs serial love is beautiful on ziyang's laptop... which resulted in the three of us staying up all night.... meaning minus the same person who concussed when watching hao er hao nu =P it's really scary how human greed can lead to people doing such revolting things, ruthlessly hurting people..... and also how just greed can dictate how people treat one another.... like how all the kids sucked up to the 'dad' when he was in possession of a piece of valuable land....
oh well i think i better start work soon... but considering how i think i'm bothered by some stuff i hope my productivity isn't that low.... but knowing myself i'm always kinda distracted so i shan't be too optimistic... must at least finish my homework today! =)

am back after surviving my midterm =P ok not that it was that bad, but the terrible me didnt do many of the readings still... so when the section on readings came out i had to guess the answers... =P had the luxury of enjoying nice home cooked food the past two nights; on wed nite cooked ;'liu4 wei4 tang1' for dinner cos he happened to buy some herbs and stuff when he went to SF chinatown that morning... the soup really reminded me of mum's soups at home... and also made me ashamed that i didn't 'specialise' in cooking any sort of decent soup... now everyone thinks that when i cook stuff i just make use of all sorts of ready mixes =( so this weekend i shall attempt to cook something original... besides my tofu last week =) and yest nite we had a sumptuous dinner at chin tah's place; cos his parents were leaving for sg and they whipped up many yummy dishes...and i think today we are prob going to zuan yi's place for dinner... .haha quite nice to get free dinner every night!
we watched hao er hao nu yest nite cos chester's mum recorded the serial for him in a dvd and sent it to him... and somehow it feels pretty nice to be able to watch something from home.... and once again i am reminded of the issues confronting many singaporeans, family problems, which though are all so familiar to me, just suddenly really 'take shape' in the show.. hmmm i dunno what i am talking about actually... but i think this serial is a pretty realistic portrayal of families in real life... the ever suspecting and poke-her-nose-into-everyone's-business wife, the independent 'new woman' who has to postpone her family plans to pursue her career, clash in values and beliefs between the older and younger generations.... and the vulnerability of relationships, the ability of even slight mistrust or even slight understanding to just tear apart a relationship. i sometimes really wonder why is it that many a time, we take such a long time to build up relationships with people, but it seriously takes just so little to break it all up. or upset it. i think its mainly because many of us are insecure creatures... well least i think i am quite an insecure creature... but i dun think it's that possible to correct that? haha anyway shiyun and i were still going strong at about 130am while ziyang had already "concussed" on the floor beside us; felt a little guilty... if only my laptop could play dvds too =( shall go back to add a dvd combo drive when i go back in dec..

supposed to be doing all my econ readings in preparation for my midterm on thursday... but i shall take a break for now.. sigh not that i hav been doing much all day... managed to pull myself away from the tv back into my room to do work but i think i probably wun start till 10pm.. procrastinate... =( life is strangely monotonous sometimes... which makes me wonder why studying dominates so much of our lives... somehow the house feels strangely quiet though there are three studious souls inhabiting it... actually the whole neighborhood feels really quiet, and yet in each of these houses there are people, individuals all engrossed in their individual tasks... so much going on but everything is concealed from everyone else's eyes... haha i think i am mad, doing some weird analysis from exterior to interior.. talking nonsense already. somehow not seeing any of the singaporeans except my housemates for the most part of the week really makes me wonder what everyone else is doing in their houses.. in their own rooms...
found out today from the guys that jehovah's witnesses hav to be put in military prison or something for 'evading' NS in singapore, since their faith prevents that from carrying arms or taking up arms or something to that effect. how terrible, to be prosecuted for believing in something...
learnt a new word today! eldorado: an imaginary place of great wealth and opportunity; sought in South America by 16th-century explorers China is dubbed to be the last eldorado, in one article in the straits times.....
ok enough of random ramblings... shall go bathe now =)

am in the midst of catching up on my econ material still.... did my both hws halfway only despite not going out for dinner and i hav to complete 100b tmr morning and 171 tmr nite! =( though i should be religiously reading my required readings for 171, which i haven't done at all.. almost!, i really feel like penning down something funny that i saw on tv today! was having dinner so decided to watch simpsons on the fox channel... and after that there appeared this tv show titled 'banzai' which was one of the most ridiculous programs i have ever seen.... it's a japanese show with all sorts of crazy experiments/ hypothetical situations asking viewers to bet on the outcomes. for example, the very first thing they did was to ask viewers how many balloons would it take to lift a chicken from the ground.. 30, 60, 90 or 120.... then they got an 'animal scientist' to try out the experiment... and the ans was 90 (though i seem to condemn the show i tried guessing too haha and i was correct =P)... but the poor chicken was just lifted from the ground and i really wonder what happened to it.... poor creature... well.. hav to say that the japanese do come up with all sorts of ideas... brilliant and somewhat strange ones too... =P

watched pirates of the carribean yesterday and thought it was pretty good. and entertaining... and it had an interesting plot... and there was this historical reference to the Aztec gold that Cortez and the spanish got from New Spain... thought it was quite cool cos i kinda read about it in my IAS 45 class... =) haha one frivolous reason why i wanted to watch it was also cos Orlando Bloom was acting in it... but i still think he looks better as Legolas with long blond hair =P
experimented with cooking once again yesterday and i made my own sweet and sour sauce! and it turned out pretty well so i was secretly pleased with my mini achievement. i attempted to 'replicate' the DC sweet and sour tofu with peanuts... haha. yay shall cook that again some day.
stayed at home all day today, in an attempt to be a good girl and do my work... but haven't been that successful; low productivity rate.. =( and was doing my hw just now and i realized that i dun really understand what i am learning.... in that my understanding is so shallow that i cannot really apply my concepts to sometimes twisted problems. oh no... and reading through the whole tb seriously takes a lot of time.. =( that was for econ 100b. i am in a similar plight for my econ c171.... stress stress. and midterm's next week!! =( feel really terrible now.

3 homeworks and a midterm await me next week. hope the weekend never ends! sigh... cannot really imagine the amount of work i have this weekend... but i choose to slack...prob going to watch pirates of the carribean and play tennis tmr =) shall try to start on saturday... just visited shiying's blog and her revamped website looks really cool.. =) feel a little 'ashamed' of my humble website.. haha but then i'll just keep it this way, well, anyway given my limited comp/web skills i doubt i can advance very far.. so i shall be content with my page for the time being =)
played piano just now and i thought it was really pressurizing to play cos we were given this room with 2 grand pianos, and whatever i played using my piano scores ziyang could play it better without scores!! quite disgusted with my lousy piano skills... am still mesmerized by claire de lune and i haven't advanced a bit in mastering the piece, quite sad. can only listen to experts playing it on my classical piano cd....

happiness is.....?
my econ c171 class seems to provide me with daily bits of random pieces of information and musings ... yesterday i found out that the QWERTY keyboard we use is designed such that u can type the word 'typewriter' using letters on the first line... and that letters are placed such that if using a typewriter, the 'arms' that print the words on the paper wun get 'messed up'... ie. letters that tend to be together in a word are spaced out.. i thought that was quite cool and brainy of those ppl who designed it..
then we were talking about the measure of poverty in class today when someone just felt the urge to give his stand on happiness... that income is usually the best measure of happiness... which i think is definitely not true though... it is probably usually an easy way out, an easy way of measuring happiness, assumed by many to be positively correlated.. but i guess in actual fact there isn't that much of a relationship, though all of us assume that we will be happier when we have more money... our instructor said there was a study which found that people in richer countries aren't that much happier than those in poorer countries.... i think many a time when we have more money we also tend to demand more things so we'll never be satisfied... we are so naturally greedy... well i guess happiness can be derived more from relationships, or just little things in life, gestures by ppl.... haha sometimes grades... (quite sad but so true), food.... cheesecake.... ice cream...
sigh... have to go for econs discussion now... ya forgot... (happiness also =no class... ) ... actually not really lah, cos if i didn't have class i would prob just laze around and do nothing and end up getting upset for doing nothing...and sometimes learning new things do make me really happy =)

went to berkeley marina yesterday to watch the july 4 fireworks. it was pretty nice; haven seen fireworks for some time already.... i especially loved the sparkly and twinkly fireworks.. where sparks of bright spots just lingers in the dark sky... so beautiful. caught one heart-shaped one and a few star shaped ones too. but no smiley faced ones though. i drove for about 45 min on the highway yesterday to the vacaville factory outlets and though i wasn't exactly very good on the highway and drifted occasionally i feel somehow proud of myself.. haha. my cheap thrill?

went to ranch 99 just now to get some groceries for the week and had two mini incidents that kinda made my day. was wheeling my cart into the supermarket and i left my economist and my wallet in it.. then was distracted by cantaloupes and somehow when i turned back my cart disappeared and it really freaked me out cos my wallet was in there! but it so turns out that this blur lady actually wheeled the wrong cart and after walking around a little in the supermart i managed to see her waving my wallet in the air looking somehwhat lost.. she apologized profusely to me for having caused the little commotion... and even confided in me how the day before she forgot to take $300 cash from the ATM machine and the guy after her came after her to return her the money... well i'm glad that there are really nice and honest people around still =)
and when i was walking along one of the isles, this little girl sitting in a cart just looked at me so innocently and gave me a really sweet smile... she was really pretty with big shiny eyes that made me melt... hmm that sounds wrong. but anyway she was just so cute and friendly and i can't help but feel a loss... of innocence... like after we grow up we can no longer do whatever we want.... in a way. like ppl would probably think i am mad if i go round smiling at them... kids are so endearing and unscheming and sometimes their candidness and 'non-retention' of any secret emotions make them so lovable...reminds me of once when i went for my krayola meeting and i was talking to one of the kids and i guess i just ate some sandwich and she unabashedly said "u smell like onions".. haha i was a little embarrassed but then amused too....

sometimes i wish i judged myself less. like i often think i dun deserve a lot of things. or am unworthy of things... and i think i'm also alwyas afraid of being judged by others... that they would think something bad of me... haha no wonder i am getting more white hair =P

it was jacqui day yesterday =P we did a lot of stuff together, from 2pm till like 12am!! =P it feels nice though, considering the fact that we haven't been hanging around that much the whole of spring semester, unlike fall when we had stats 20 3 times a week together and got to see each other more often... before i start on my jacqui day just feel like sharing a little incident that made me happy though i guess in the eyes of others it is nothing much... i volunteered an answer in my econ c171 class today and when i went to see my instructor for office hours after that he told me he was glad that i spoke up in class... it's those type of things that when people say it u are just like oh ok, and u try to keep a straight face but then somehow deep down inside u feel secretly happy despite it being such an insignificant thing. oh well.. =)

yup jacqui and i decided to have a baking day and so 'armed' with jacqui's homemade cheesecake recipe we started out preparing all the ingredients... with some improvisations here and there.... our cheesecake was pretty successful and it was really yummy and all of us finished it at chester's place... =) of course i ate a lot more in fact cos while preparing the cheese filling i uncontrollably tou chi some of it... =P we also bought a chewy brownie mix from albertsons and baked extremely sinful and chocolaty brownies, with additional marshmallows..... i love chewy brownies.. =) that turned out well too.. (haha ok guess it was a ready made mix so nothing terribly wrong could have happened) then we all went to chester's new place for dinner and we were barred from entry before 7pm so we went to exercise... for me in an attempt to redeem myself... after having eaten so much sweet high calorie stuff..yup so played tennis with ziyang and jacqui.. =) quite fun. finally we went to chester's new place, well furnished with new ikea furniture and his price-not-supposed-to-be-disclosed chio hi fi set... the table was laid out so nicely with pretty place mats that we felt guilty spilling food =P then of course we had our usual after-dinner slacking around and talking session and the highlight of hte night was "in conversation with jacqui" haha. quite interesting, found out some things i never knew and guess she was pretty sporting and candid about some stuff so it was pretty nice =) girls tried to 'turn the tables' on the guys but then it wasn't as interesting. unfair. =P got home really really late but it was a nice day definitely....

went to ping chien's new place for dinner just now and her wonderful cooking really put me to shame. i doubt i even have 1/10 the standard of her cooking! there was tasty shitake mushroom, savory steamed catfish, chicken curry, xiao bai cai and all the dishes were cooked by her!! after dinner we carried on with our usual dessert with ice cream.. extremely sinful.. with the choco cake that shiying and i baked at her place yesterday.... i have accumulated a sizeable stock of junk food and sweet stuff at home.. i am the proud owner of 5 pints of ice cream all unfinished... bens and jerrys, haagen daaz and godiva... have 2 packets of white choc mac nut cookies at home... one whole box of hello panda..... and going to get really fat =P i shall resolve not to buy any more ice cream for the next month or so... and try to slowly deplete my stock at home...=) am now trying to read my development econs textbook but then i am so sleepy i think i'll give up. slept at 2 something trying to finish my excel hw and woke up at six something =( i am fast falling behind all my classes.. with unfinished readings everyday.. econ c171 has esp many readings... and two hws due every week, one excel one and one policy brief...

am somewhat amused cos was talking to one classmate in my section and she said she thought i was korean. then jing always says if i wear contacts i look really korean.. haha maybe my great great grandparents had korean blood... hmm ok talking rubbish. but it's strange, cos my mum also used to tell me how people always thought she was japanese or something, when she was young... maybe it's cos i have small eyes and single eye lids... =P

yay!!! i passed my driving test!! =) it was quite unexpected though, cos i have always thought myself a somewhat lousy driver... but i guess after about an hour or so of practice by my housemate driving instructor i improved a lot more and i guess i was lucky just now too... so i passed!! yay. now i can drive around legally... but sadly i dun have a car though. well.... now i am slightly tempted to get a car... but i doubt my parents would allow it... also experienced first hand the frankness of Americans full blown... the somewhat forgetful and blur me forgot to change my address on my temporary driving licence.. i left it as the dorm add so i went back to the el cerrito DMV office to change it and the lady was really pissed and irritated with me and said 'why are u guys so irritating' straight in my face... then she trotted off to her colleague to complain, who suggested, "why dun we slap her" or "put water in her hair" right in front of me... though after a year i am already used to Americans saying whatever they want to, this experience was somewhat 'demeaning' and i felt like i was really terrible and irresponsible. oh well.. maybe they are too stressed by the never ending long lines at the DMV office.. and i guess i was in the wrong.. so...
was pretty happy so went to Albertsons and bought more ice cream (mac brittle was 2.50!) and lotsa food.. and stuff for making sandwiches.. shall try to make many sandwiches for lunch next week or for the rest of this week, instead of cooking all the time. it's cheap and pretty convenient i think.
still haven't figured out my econ c171 homework due tmr morning!! aargh.. prob hav to stay up tonight again to work on it.....
but so happy i passed my driving test!! =) and really appreciate those who wished me good luck and jun who gave me advice telling me to appear confident and all.. =P

had such an eventful day today and though i am really tired and feel like just plunging for my bed i just can't help but write a little bit on my blog =)
Went to Alcatraz to see the famed penitentiary this afternoon.... it was ok but guess my experience could hav been better if not for the fact that i was wearing my skechers platforms which made my feet blistery after walking... sigh. cos we were going to hav a formal dinner right after our trip and i thought we would hav no time to change so i just wore whatever i intended to wear there.. oh well =)
but the highlight of the day was our somewhat crazy idea of all the freshmen dressing up in suits and gowns and marching down to some restaurant for dinner just for the sake of having fun and seeing one another in our best attires... it so turns out that this 'wild' thought materialized and things turned out pretty well and i really enjoyed myself just now. some peeks into our formal dinner:
1) Shiying wore a dress for the first time! thought it was really sporting of her and it was nice to see her in a dress =)
2) All the guys wore their suits and thought everyone looked really smart and good.
3) so did the girls who did not fail to shine beside their male companions..
4) prom revisited when after dinner we just stood outside the restaurant, braving the cold, cameras clicking away....
somehow feel glad that though i dind't do work all weekend at least i enjoyed myself thoroughly..... hmm better try to read up and do some hw tmr... =P

today was a rollercoaster ride... haven't had such an interesting day for some time. went to class somewhat excited, but not really about my lectures but about what i could do after class... strange as it sounds i was looking forward to snipping off my locks, though after having grown my hair for nearly a year i have grown somewhat attached to my not so tidy long hair... but somehow thought it was time for a change... went to the hairdresser along solano to try out and i think i didn't make myself that clear about how i wnated my hair to be cut and the hairdresser had to make amendments at least twice. i wanted her to make my hair 'thinner', to 'shred' it a little cos my hair is so thick and i think she didn't quite get it so after some time she hinted that she had to serve other customers too.. haha felt quite guilty and hair didn't exactly turn out whatever i wanted but it's ok lah.. . for $14 i cannot be that picky. the most amusing thing was that when ziyang came to pick me up at the albany safeway he didn't realize that i cut my hair til after we walked around safeway for around 10 min and i was pretty amused. i thought it was somewhat obvious that my hair was much shorter ;P

did ziyang a misdeed and feel really guilty about it... scratched his beloved car while backing out of a parking lot and though he didn't scold me or anything i'm sure it must have been painful. now i think i better dun take my driving test, cos i seem to be incapable of judging distances accurately and i dun deserve to pass after all.

had an extremely enjoyable time cooking dinner at shiying's place just now... squish the chief cook prepared so many yummy and sophisticated dishes it put my past dishes to shame =P sad thing was the asam fish they cooked was contaminated with the non stick material from the lousy jcpenny pot and as a result we had to dump all the contents away. i didn't cook anything.. was the 'chopper of the day' .. but shiying and i baked chocolate cake and it was surprisingly successful.. discounting the fact that we used a cake mix.. our first try wasn't too bad =P and the funny thing was when we had to 'transport' all our dishes from shiyin'gs place to jacqui's place since we were preparing food for the household and jacqui's parents who were returning to sg tonight... i can never forget our hilarious 3 min ride in the car.... how chester got his tomyum (hmmm i cannot spell..) flavored berms and all the screaming in the car when we were driving up the slope and trying hard to prevent any food from the dishes we were holding from spillling out....
wonder if the rest of our summer will be like that? hope i will still have time for fun things like this in the midst of my weekly hw and readings.. =)

it's only the 3rd day of sch and i am falling asleep in class... kept dozing off in my econ 100b lecture.. aargh. but maybe cos it was a little boring cos it was stuff that i kinda knew.... hopefully i will be able to pay more attention next week...
received my first piece of homework for econ c171 and it looks highly intimidating... it requires some knowledge of excel which i have none... and seems somewhat mathematical, all the graph plotting etc... feel somewhat inadequate now... but i will just try my best and hopefully learn as much as i can from this new class.. somehow though both 171 and 100b are upper div classes, i can somewhat easily tell the difference between the more specialized 171 and 100b.. like 100b still seems to be some introductory course to econ even though it's considered intermediate.
the weather is getting unbearably hot.. for the first time here my weather bug actually registered a record 31C.... hope it doens't go any higher else it would be really irritating cos there's no aircon =P plus the heat makes me drowsy...
i really tried reading my devt econ and macro econ textbooks but somehow i cannot really get anything in. i suspect i am still in holiday mood and nothing seems to go into my brain.
what a highly fragmented entry... wonder if it reflects my state of mind rite now?
shall resolve to do something drastic tomorrow and i hope i dun regret.....

suddenly feel somewhat depressed but can't figure out exactly why. and i'm being so irrational; i have readings to do for my development econs class but i haven't finished them nor have i read my econ 100b textbook. somehow just felt like writing something to soothe my soul.. i think sometimes writing about things is really surprisingly therapeutic.. well in case anyone who reads this thinks i'm really unstable right now pls dun be worried cos i sometimes just get upset for no reason so it's not that unusual.... =P
occasionally i really can't stand myself for being so neutral on everything. like i sometimes feel somewhat opinonless or indecisive and sometimes even though i may feel strongly for something i may not show it in action. and i guess i'm much less opinionated and neutral about matters half the time...which makes me wonder if i just take everything as it is and accept whatever i see or am taught.
c171 seems like a potentially interesting class that will definitely make me aware of third world country conditions. and make me think more about inequality in this world. i seriously hope that i will enjoy this class and learn a lot from it; though i am a little intimidated by the somewhat impressive statuses and "credentials" of some of my classmates; mostly seniors and there are even grad students.... sometimes i think i dun really think about things that i learn on the spot; i tend to absorb everything like a sponge and somehow it's only when i read evreything more thoroughly by myself that i truly digest everything that's taught and gain more from the material; so maybe i 'm a slow learner... and the 'supper' discussion which brought up the numerous A+s that our seniors got made me feel really small.... but then grades aren't everything so i shan't make myself too sad =)
well better get to bed soon if i dun want to end up missing the bus tmr morning and be late for class and end up feeling even more disadvantaged in my econ class... hmm actually i shouldn't feel that inferior.. maybe a more positive attitude might improve my performance =)

school is starting tmr.... and i'll have to get up at 645 or something! =( went for my first church service ever this morning with ziyang sumei jacqui and her parents at their church and it was a pretty interesting experience. when i first stepped into the hall, the first thing that came into mind was somehow that everyone who attended were all pretty young; it was as if i entered a uni lecture hall! and everyone was singing christian songs really enthusiastically... after that came the message by a guest pastor and i thought his message was pretty inspiring and thought-provoking. i suppose why so many people turn up for services regularly is mainly because it allows us to reflect on ourselves... things that we have done, things that we should be doing etc... to learn to better appreciate life, the people around us.... however i am still somewhat unconvinced that 'God' plays a impt part in all these... in that whatever was taught to those present at the service seemed to be applicable to everyone and not just Christians.. i wonder if it is somehow through believing in 'God' that individuals actually have more faith and strength in going about overcoming difficulties, facing the challenges in life, because they believe that whatever happens, someone will be present to watch over them or to ensure that things dun go awry.. In viewing the church as a social group rather than a religious one, i think it is a very cosy and nice community; like how the church celebrated the birthday of one of their members today, thought that was really sweet.. i thought it a little interesting though that in the message something like 'u are most free when u hold on to nothing' or something to that effect, i cannot quite recall exactly.... was something similar to what i penned down in my last entry... guess it's kinda paradoxical, in that sometimes when u really like something or someone u want to hav it/him/her with u all the time but then there comes a point when u overdo it and it results in 'suffocation'... haha dunno what i am talking about.

was happily eating my instant noodles from my hotpot just now in the dining room when i heard some commotion in the doorway and to my 'horror' a party of at least six people, freshmen and seniors combined appeared at my doorstep. it so happens that they hav decided to embark on a house tour and our house happened to be one of their stops. haha good thing my room wasn't in a terrible mess yet else it would have been kinda embarrassing....i had better prepare myself for possible surprise visits else i will get mild heart attacks if large crowds of people suddenly appear at my doorstep =P decided to wash all my new clothes so did laundry just now but to my horror the forgetful me left a packet of tissue in one of my jeans pockets and as a result i now hav bits of tissue all over my clothes!! =( took 15 min to 'dust away' all the tissue bits onto the garage floor and had to use my vacuum cleaner to clear up the remnants of tissue... felt quite silly.... esp when this batch of clothes has my new clothes! =(
hope sch's fine tmr..... =)

have been lazy and not writing for the past few days. today marks the end of jing and her sis's stay at my place... and my room is 'empty' once again... after having spent more than a week with jing and about a week with her sis, our 'outings' seem to have become routine and i feel a little strange now with their absence. but today also marks the trickling in of berkeley freshmen in preparation for summer school...suddenly it's quite 're nao' here all over again... i really wonder what it will be like. one part of me wants to start school and learn new things and stimulate my brain cells again while the other part of me just wants to relax and bum around and do nothing as i have kind of been doing for the past few weeks.

had an amazingly long dinner just now for 8 people... we exhausted all our pots and pans and cutlery... it's kinda fun to have many people eating in the house but then it's seriously pretty time consuming.. food preparation... washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen etc.... somehow at dinner i could feel the familiar berkeley ppl dinner again.... but i somehow feel that things may be a little different now, or that things will be different in summer or from now on, since we are no longer living in the dorms. i'ts nearly 2 am and i think i am getting less and less clear minded... been out the whole day fruit picking in Brentwood; having eaten at least 4 peaches, apricots, plums and cherries and having walked under the scorching sun the whole afternoon i feel really burnt and somewhat drained... but it was fun though, the refreshing experience of some country fun and more interaction with nature? thoughts are really getting disorganized and messy rite now..... sometimes i really dunno what i feel about certain things or sometimes i really can't help feeling a certain way though i dun want to.....so terrible. somtimes i feel really independent and am secretly contented with my independence and 'self-sufficiency' but then at times i just feel like i want someone to do everything for me.... sometimes i think i can get a little possessive... but when u start to hold things too tightly to urself there's always the danger of repellence... i wonder if everyone feels as contradictory at some point in time?

somehow woke up so early this morning i am somewhat bewildered as well... woke up at an unprecendented 745 am and decided that i should be healthy and take a morning jog around the neighborhood... which i did. it was pretty cold in the morning and this being the first time running in the cold, or rather, jogging at all, i was actually a little paranoid while jogging.. that i'll get pneumonia from inhaling all the cold air... well but good thing nothing happened =) jogging's pretty refreshing and invigorating so i should do that more often.. and especially when i have such a nice neighborhood it would really be a waste if i dun explore around a lil bit =)

went to campus today to declare my econ major... though i screwed up my stats 20 i hope i can declare successfully... somehow being on campus again made me feel a strange sense of belonging and satisfaction.. the familiar buildings and surroundings seemed to make me feel really contented that i chose berkeley. somehow though i have been to quite a few schs i think i still prefer berkeley. though it may not be the prettiest sch around, nor the biggest, nor the one with the best reputation, i think my experiences and the memories from the past 2 semesters have been able to make me feel pretty attached to the place already... like it's somewhat a part of me, a part of my life that i would feel somewhat incomplete without. which reminds me of the little prince. like how he talks about there being so many roses in the world but there is one rose that is his, that means something to him... cos he watered it and took care of it and shared common experiences with it. so sweet. just like friends... our friends may not be the most perfect people around but we love them all the same because of the fun, joy, woes we shared...

went to hilltop mall with jing and her sis today after berkeley.... cos ppl said the theatres there were good so i thought perhaps i could 'bring' them there to watch movies.. but somehow we ended up shopping the whole day and i bought more stuff!! =( aargh, i need to stay in for the next few days else i will seriously go broke. having navigated for the past one week, i am starting to enjoy and appreciate highways in the US; they are all so guided that u can get to almost anywhere u want, or not too 'off track' if u follow the signs... and somehow it isn't that bad to get lost either.. =P saw this really heavenly bedsheet and comforter set titled starstruck in JCPenney but then it was so expensive i couldn't have bought it... ever.. =P so i took a picture of it... =) somehow malls in the US are so different from those in SG... like there were barely any people in the shopping mall... well maybe cos it's a weekday.. so unlike sg where students always hang out and crowd around in shopping centres.. i guess it's also cos in the US u really need a car to get around and it isn't that easy for teenagers and kids to just take bus anywhere and everywhere...

yay am home!! back in my nice room... i love my room so much i think no one can understand... =P but had fun the past week too... just that it's nice to come back to ur own room... =) shall write some other time.. =P

feel really tired.. been shopping the whole day at great mall.. and bought so many things i'm really guilty.. haha but then the stuff was pretty cheap.. that's why i bought so much stuff..... anyway i've bought them already so i shall not regret =) went to gilroy to shop too yesterday after visiting the monterey aquarium in the morning and driving down the scenic 17-mile drive along the coast and stopping shortly at the beautiful sandy carmel beach. it feels so comfortable and nice just walking barefeet on the soft fine sand... sat down on the sand to enjoy the breeze and scenery and there were two little babies just crawling about on the sand.. they were so cute i really felt like crawling over to play with them but ultimately i didn't dare to cos their parents were in close proximity. great mall is pretty nice to shop... nicer than gilroy i feel, maybe cos it's indoors and it's easier to get from shop to shop... qingyuan drove the 3 of us to the great mall and shopped with us all day... i kind of pity him cos whenever we wanted to try clothes poor him had to sit somewhere to wait or just entertain himself on his phone.. guess initially he was more enthusiastic.. but eventually his interest waned when we seemed to be ever as enthu about going into shops that probably seemed similar to him.. =P bought this pair of platfom slippers from skechers too and it made me at least 6 cm taller it feels really good haha.. =P well at the expense of some comfort of course. came back and ate cheesecake jing's aunt bought for the 3 of us... and i think i probably fnished nearly half the cheesecake by myself since jing and her sis seemed to have gotten a little sick of it... =P and then played jing's aunt's grand piano for at least an hour... cos jing's aunt has the titanic score.. and somehow got really hooked and mesmerized by the nice score... sigh sadly no photocopy machine so i can't zap the score.. =( if jing manages to renew the car insurance.. think i'll be back home tomorrow night.. if not, will probably stay here for another day or so...