Last week, I broke my strong spring break tradition of sitting at home doing nothing to fly to NJ and visit my sister at St. Peter's College, and I had an AMAZING time! It was my first time in the NJ/NY area, and I loved it. But NY alone didn't make the trip as good as it was - hanging out with my sister and meeting her awesome group of friends played a huge part. They were all so nice/funny, and they made me feel right at home. I thought it was so cool how they hang out with each other all the time, popping in and out of each other's apartments; it reminded me of my first year in the dorms and how I would visit people all the time, and apparently how much I miss being with people all the time. I'm gonna try to spend more time just hanging out with people :)
Some things I want to remember from my trip:
- Tripp's story of how I got the nickname "ATM"
- Mae's story of how someone used the word "noob" in a college paper
- the night Joe thought he had scabies
- Greg doing the John Cena rap (b-b-basic thugonomics)
- winning the game of Mario Party
- when Yomi lost her nose ring ("I'm Yomi with a nose ring!")
- going to the top of the empire state building/seeing times square with kimberly
- visiting columbia and the village with dee lou
- seeing my dinosaur family in the natural history museum
- the subway catching on fire
- spending the day in ny with tripp and mae - playing on every playground we passed, visiting MIB headquarters, and chasing a turkey in Battery Park
- watching Indian in the Cupboard for the first time since childhood and being severely disappointed
- watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and it being surprisingly good
- realizing that my sister wasn't exaggerating about living in the ghetto, how many black people there are at her school, and the size of her school being the size of royce plaza at ucla
- having my mom text me every few hours to see what i was doing, and having her send the same text again if i didn't respond within an hour
If I think of anything more, I'll add it later. If you're reading this and are one of the people I spent the week with - THANK YOU for making it such an amazing week. I really wish I could have stayed longer, and I hope to come back and visit again soon :)
Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Colorblindness
For those of you who don't know, I am indeed colorblind. Mostly red/green colorblind, to be exact. So what does this mean? Well, until my first year of college at UCLA, I didn't even know I was colorblind, so it honestly doesn't make that much of a difference. I found out that I was colorblind during my Psych 10 class, when there was one of those colorblind tests - the one where you're supposed to see a number in a bunch of colored dots.. and I couldn't see the number -_-
You know that part in Little Miss Sunshine when the son finds out that he's colorblind and flips out in the car? Yea.. my reaction was nothing like that haha. I mean, I had gone through my whole life just fine thinking that the colors I saw were the colors everyone else saw - I think it's just something that most people assume.
Being colorblind honestly doesn't bother me at all, but ever since I've found out I was colorblind, there are some instances where I found out things I never knew about from normal-vision people. For example, I just found out the other day that Microsoft Word actually has two different colors for underlining mistakes - one for grammatical and one for spelling. Definitely had no idea that those were different colors. About a month ago, I found out that the status dots on Gchat actually come in different colors too - green for available and red for busy. As you can see, these are definitely not life-altering revelations, but it does make me wonder what other things I will discover down the line that everyone else just seems to know. And the thing is, I won't discover these things unless a normal-vision person happens to bring it up in conversation, like the Microsoft Word incident. These little revelations are interesting. :)
When they find out I'm colorblind, people always ask me "Ooooh, what do you see?". And I never know what to tell them. It's not like I see black and white, I definitely see colors.. just not the colors that everyone else sees. And it's weird, because I have distinct ideas of what red and green are, but sometimes I can't tell them apart or can't tell if something is red or green. So in those instances where I can't tell if a color is red or green... what AM I seeing? Well, that's a really good question. It's hard to describe colors though - I mean, what would you say to someone if they asked you to describe the color blue?
Anyways, there have only been 3 actual instances I can remember where colorblindness has hindered me from doing something:
1. In a lecture when the teacher was using green and red sharpies do draw diagrams on the board.
2. In Mario Kart, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the red and green shells and I have to aim them like green shells just in case.
3. In tetris-like games based on matching colors together.
I'd also like to attribute my poor fashion sense to colorblindness too, but I'm pretty sure that's just me.
You know that part in Little Miss Sunshine when the son finds out that he's colorblind and flips out in the car? Yea.. my reaction was nothing like that haha. I mean, I had gone through my whole life just fine thinking that the colors I saw were the colors everyone else saw - I think it's just something that most people assume.
Being colorblind honestly doesn't bother me at all, but ever since I've found out I was colorblind, there are some instances where I found out things I never knew about from normal-vision people. For example, I just found out the other day that Microsoft Word actually has two different colors for underlining mistakes - one for grammatical and one for spelling. Definitely had no idea that those were different colors. About a month ago, I found out that the status dots on Gchat actually come in different colors too - green for available and red for busy. As you can see, these are definitely not life-altering revelations, but it does make me wonder what other things I will discover down the line that everyone else just seems to know. And the thing is, I won't discover these things unless a normal-vision person happens to bring it up in conversation, like the Microsoft Word incident. These little revelations are interesting. :)
When they find out I'm colorblind, people always ask me "Ooooh, what do you see?". And I never know what to tell them. It's not like I see black and white, I definitely see colors.. just not the colors that everyone else sees. And it's weird, because I have distinct ideas of what red and green are, but sometimes I can't tell them apart or can't tell if something is red or green. So in those instances where I can't tell if a color is red or green... what AM I seeing? Well, that's a really good question. It's hard to describe colors though - I mean, what would you say to someone if they asked you to describe the color blue?
Anyways, there have only been 3 actual instances I can remember where colorblindness has hindered me from doing something:
1. In a lecture when the teacher was using green and red sharpies do draw diagrams on the board.
2. In Mario Kart, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the red and green shells and I have to aim them like green shells just in case.
3. In tetris-like games based on matching colors together.
I'd also like to attribute my poor fashion sense to colorblindness too, but I'm pretty sure that's just me.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Busy Indicators
So I've been pretty busy these past few weeks with Mentorship/Unicamp/work, and I've noticed there are definitely a few indicators that tells how busy I am.
1. The cleanliness of my room - Especially the clothes on floor/bed : clothes in hamper ratio. Right now that ratio is pretty high.
2. My beard - Shaving is a luxury activity that I partake in when I have ample time. Right now my beard is pretty shaggy.
3. The number of LOST episodes that I'm behind - I'm currently 2 episodes behind for the newest season. In another few days I'll be 3 episodes behind, which is borderline unacceptable, but will make for an epic catchup session.
4. The number of pages my bookmark has moved in my book - I've been on the same book since Winter break actually (The Black Hole War, good stuff).
5. The number of times I update my blog - It's been a while since I've updated this thing. Since the last time I've updated, some pretty big stuff has happened. Let's see... It looks like I am officially going to be a Bruin for another 2 years! I got into UCLA's grad school for Education and I just submitted my Statement of Intent to Register the other day. That'll make it 7 years that I've been around UCLA. That's almost a third of my life!
Also, I finally caved and got a new TV. A 32' Samsung LCD HDTV to be exact. For the past few years, what has happened is that my urge to get a new TV will keep increasing until it reaches the threshold point, at which point I'll call my mom and she'll talk me out of it, returning the urge to a base point. However, this time when I reached the threshold, my mom said I should go ahead and get it since I've been wanting it for so long. And that just pushed me over the edge.
1. The cleanliness of my room - Especially the clothes on floor/bed : clothes in hamper ratio. Right now that ratio is pretty high.
2. My beard - Shaving is a luxury activity that I partake in when I have ample time. Right now my beard is pretty shaggy.
3. The number of LOST episodes that I'm behind - I'm currently 2 episodes behind for the newest season. In another few days I'll be 3 episodes behind, which is borderline unacceptable, but will make for an epic catchup session.
4. The number of pages my bookmark has moved in my book - I've been on the same book since Winter break actually (The Black Hole War, good stuff).
5. The number of times I update my blog - It's been a while since I've updated this thing. Since the last time I've updated, some pretty big stuff has happened. Let's see... It looks like I am officially going to be a Bruin for another 2 years! I got into UCLA's grad school for Education and I just submitted my Statement of Intent to Register the other day. That'll make it 7 years that I've been around UCLA. That's almost a third of my life!
Also, I finally caved and got a new TV. A 32' Samsung LCD HDTV to be exact. For the past few years, what has happened is that my urge to get a new TV will keep increasing until it reaches the threshold point, at which point I'll call my mom and she'll talk me out of it, returning the urge to a base point. However, this time when I reached the threshold, my mom said I should go ahead and get it since I've been wanting it for so long. And that just pushed me over the edge.
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