Hello blog.
Sometimes I forget to write in my blog until someone reminds me that it's here. Anyhoo, it's been a while, so LIFE UPDATE TIME!
1. I've started working at UCLA Lab School, formerly known as University Elementary School, as a full time TA for 5th grade. In a closely related subject, I am now officially getting old. The kids call me Mr. Mendoza, I'm paying rent all by myself, and I don't go out past 10pm if it's a weeknight.
The job itself is pretty good - I'm getting a lot of experience working with kids, and hopefully it'll help me figure out if teaching is what I really want to do. The kids are very observant - they've noticed that I smile all the time, have a really loud laugh, and wear camp shirts a lot. They've also noticed that I only shave once a week.
2. I'm living in a new apartment this year with my roommate from first year, the legend BC (Brandon Contreras) himself, thus bringing my roommate cycle full circle. The apartment is a lot nicer than my old apartment (See: The Worst Apartment Ever) - it's bigger, the rooms aren't awkwardly shaped, it doesn't smell, it has reception, and there are no cockroaches. So +5 for new apartment. The manager was really mean at first, but I think I'm getting on his good side. On a downside, I saw some termites inside last week, but I swiftly killed them all and haven't seen anymore... yet...
3. Mentorship is really starting up now. My co-program director and I spent a lot of the summer writing our funding proposal, and I'm happy to say that a few days ago we found out that we got MONAY IN THE BANK! We got $9845 out of the 10000 we asked for, so we were very pleased.
4. I found a new show: How I Met Your Mother. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite shows.
5. I started playing Pokemon again. I played it on the car ride back from Vegas with my family this summer, and since then I've still been playing it. Although I'm playing less now because of #1 and #3.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The Westwood Omelette
I realized that my past few posts have been me ranting about stuff I didn't like, so I decided it was time to write about something of which I revere: The Westwood Omelette.
The Westwood Omelette at Headlines is my favorite meal in Westwood. The omelette seriously has everything you could ever ask for in an omelette, and more. It's like God descended from the Heavens, looked at the omelettes we had here on Earth, and said, "No no you silly humans, here is how you make an omelette." God then proceeded to create the Westwood Omelette and entrusted Headlines with the task of distributing His creation to the world at a reasonable price. God looked at the Westwood Omelette and said, "Yes, this is good."
I was trying to find a picture of it online and I couldn't find one, but the picture wouldn't do it justice anyways. Just imagine in your head a huge omelette, with cheese, avocado, bacon, ham, and tomatoes, served with delicious hash browns and french toast. Now imagine that x10 and you have the Westwood Omelette. I realize that an omelette may not seem like a thing to get this excited over, but only those who have not tasted the Westwood Omelette would think such things. I hope to some day live in a world where everyone appreciates the Westwood Omelette for what it really is, and I have them served to me in bed on a platter every morning by little Headlines fairies. Until then, if you're down to go get a Westwood Omelette at Headlines, I'm down as well.
The Westwood Omelette at Headlines is my favorite meal in Westwood. The omelette seriously has everything you could ever ask for in an omelette, and more. It's like God descended from the Heavens, looked at the omelettes we had here on Earth, and said, "No no you silly humans, here is how you make an omelette." God then proceeded to create the Westwood Omelette and entrusted Headlines with the task of distributing His creation to the world at a reasonable price. God looked at the Westwood Omelette and said, "Yes, this is good."
I was trying to find a picture of it online and I couldn't find one, but the picture wouldn't do it justice anyways. Just imagine in your head a huge omelette, with cheese, avocado, bacon, ham, and tomatoes, served with delicious hash browns and french toast. Now imagine that x10 and you have the Westwood Omelette. I realize that an omelette may not seem like a thing to get this excited over, but only those who have not tasted the Westwood Omelette would think such things. I hope to some day live in a world where everyone appreciates the Westwood Omelette for what it really is, and I have them served to me in bed on a platter every morning by little Headlines fairies. Until then, if you're down to go get a Westwood Omelette at Headlines, I'm down as well.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Music on the Radio
So I was driving home on the freeway today, flipping through my radio stations like I usually do, and I hear this catchy song, and I think to myself.. "wow, maybe there's actually something good on the radio now!" Turns out it was a commercial for Toyota. And that's when I really realized it: the radio, for the most part, just does not satisfy my musical needs anymore. All these new songs seriously sound the same.. And at one point on my drive, that one song, "Tonight's Gonna be a Good Night" or whatever it's called, was playing on 3 stations at once. I only like this song when I'm in the car with other people, cause then it's like.. ya know, tonight is gonna be a good night with my friends, and the lyrics are simple enough to repeat over and over. But when you're driving by yourself, the song just gets annoying and repetitive in my opinion.
Sorry, I got a little caught up on my rant on that Good Night song. But yea, I've been resorting to turning off the radio and just singing in the car by myself. Not even singing along with the radio.. just singing by myself. I find it a lot more entertaining than most of the radio. Unfortunately, my car does not have a CD player, and the tape player also isn't working so I can't use the tape converter for my ipod. It's hard to emphasize how unfortunate this is, because good music would make car rides a heck of a lot more fun.
Then again, maybe this is just me getting old and not liking all this new crazy music that kids listen to nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I do like some of the new stuff that's out there. But for the large part, I don't like the general trend of where the music industry is going right now. Specifically in the rap/hip hop genre, which is mostly what the radio plays. Maybe I just need to find some new stations? I've found myself starting to drift away from kroq, kiis fm, and amp radio to more mellow stations like My FM and Coast.. :P
Sorry, I got a little caught up on my rant on that Good Night song. But yea, I've been resorting to turning off the radio and just singing in the car by myself. Not even singing along with the radio.. just singing by myself. I find it a lot more entertaining than most of the radio. Unfortunately, my car does not have a CD player, and the tape player also isn't working so I can't use the tape converter for my ipod. It's hard to emphasize how unfortunate this is, because good music would make car rides a heck of a lot more fun.
Then again, maybe this is just me getting old and not liking all this new crazy music that kids listen to nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I do like some of the new stuff that's out there. But for the large part, I don't like the general trend of where the music industry is going right now. Specifically in the rap/hip hop genre, which is mostly what the radio plays. Maybe I just need to find some new stations? I've found myself starting to drift away from kroq, kiis fm, and amp radio to more mellow stations like My FM and Coast.. :P
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Worst Apartment Ever
Ok, so I've only lived in two apartments so far, and one of them was a furnished University Apartment, but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that the apartment I stayed in last year is one of the worst apartments, if not the worst apartment, in the Westwood apartment area. Where do I begin...
I guess there are a lot of little things that add up to big problems, and there are also big things that are just big problems on their own.
1. Smell. The apartment building had a variety of odors, none of which were all too pleasant. Depending on where you were in the building, you could experience a different foul odor. The elevator often smelled of alcohol and trash, our own apartment often smelled of secondhand smoke, courtesy of the chronic weed smokers elsewhere in the complex, and in the hallways you could actually smell a plethora of different aromas as you walked the length of the corridor. Someone wrote "This place STANK!" on the elevator door halfway through the year, and the mark was definitely warranted.
2. Reception. Or rather, lack thereof. It wasn't very convenient getting voice messages and missed calls hours after they were placed. Nor was it fun having to go outside the building every time I wanted to make a call.
3. Ya know, the place was just OLD, and in need or repair. They just need to shut down the building for a while and renovate the place. When we first moved in, they claimed that they "cleaned" the carpet, which apparently doesn't include removing bits of trash and nails. My closet doors were broken all year, though they "fixed" it a few times. At one point in the year all the burners in our stove stopped working. The water from our bathroom sink and shower was brown for a while, and sometimes it smelled like sewage. I learned to always smell the water first before using it.
4. Floor plan. The apartment had the most awkward floor plan I have every seen. Who makes rooms in pentagon shape?? It's like the place wasn't designed to accommodate furniture (or people for that matter).
5. Roaches. I saved the best for last, because this is what really made the whole apartment experience. Let me introduce you to our 5th roommate, the cockroach colony. They were there when we first moved in, and who knows how long they had already been there. Naturally, we complained, filled out request forms, etc, every time leading to an attempt at spraying down the place and leaving nice smells (see #1). However, I am fairly confident that all the spraying did was cause the roaches to evolve into bigger and stronger roaches. Survival of the fittest at its best. In the beginning of the year, they were actually pretty small and slow. Towards the end of the year, they had gotten much bigger in size, and I'm pretty sure some of them were starting to evolve wing-like structures on their backs. Thankfully I'm not going to be around when they finally do evolve the ability to fly. Seeing as how the feeble attempts of the apartment service were only making the roaches stronger, we had to take matters into our own hands. This marked the beginning of a longstanding war between us and the roach colony. We bought traps and our own spray, but the roaches had numbers on their side. Clearly, a large scale attack was needed. And so about halfway through the year, The Purge happened - we cleaned everything possible, sprayed in every corner, and for once we thought everything was going to be ok. We slept peacefully that night. Unfortunately, it was a false sense of comfort. The next day, the roaches were already back. I'm pretty sure all we did was anger them. And so we conceded to a truce - they stay in the kitchen and come out only at night, and we'd just let them be. This worked for a while, but blatant violations of the truce soon began, and we were powerless to stop it, still being demoralized from the failed Purge. It got to the point that sometimes I would open up a drawer, watch a cockroach scramble out from inside one of my bowls, and be like "eh." By the end of the year, we knew that we had clearly lost the war. Whenever I would go out into the kitchen at night, I would give the roaches a 10 second grace period after I turned on the lights to run and hide in their little corners, so I could at least pretend like they weren't there. Towards the end of the year though, they just stayed where they were after I turned on the lights, mocking me, knowing that I was defeated and powerless...
For the price we paid, the apartment was nothing short of robbery. There was ONE redeeming factor about the place, and that was that we had free fire in the fireplace. You could flip a lightswitch, and a fire would come on in the fireplace! Sometimes I would turn on the fire even if it was hot, because it was the only good thing about the apartment, and I wanted to cling to that light in dark times.
I guess there are a lot of little things that add up to big problems, and there are also big things that are just big problems on their own.
1. Smell. The apartment building had a variety of odors, none of which were all too pleasant. Depending on where you were in the building, you could experience a different foul odor. The elevator often smelled of alcohol and trash, our own apartment often smelled of secondhand smoke, courtesy of the chronic weed smokers elsewhere in the complex, and in the hallways you could actually smell a plethora of different aromas as you walked the length of the corridor. Someone wrote "This place STANK!" on the elevator door halfway through the year, and the mark was definitely warranted.
2. Reception. Or rather, lack thereof. It wasn't very convenient getting voice messages and missed calls hours after they were placed. Nor was it fun having to go outside the building every time I wanted to make a call.
3. Ya know, the place was just OLD, and in need or repair. They just need to shut down the building for a while and renovate the place. When we first moved in, they claimed that they "cleaned" the carpet, which apparently doesn't include removing bits of trash and nails. My closet doors were broken all year, though they "fixed" it a few times. At one point in the year all the burners in our stove stopped working. The water from our bathroom sink and shower was brown for a while, and sometimes it smelled like sewage. I learned to always smell the water first before using it.
4. Floor plan. The apartment had the most awkward floor plan I have every seen. Who makes rooms in pentagon shape?? It's like the place wasn't designed to accommodate furniture (or people for that matter).
5. Roaches. I saved the best for last, because this is what really made the whole apartment experience. Let me introduce you to our 5th roommate, the cockroach colony. They were there when we first moved in, and who knows how long they had already been there. Naturally, we complained, filled out request forms, etc, every time leading to an attempt at spraying down the place and leaving nice smells (see #1). However, I am fairly confident that all the spraying did was cause the roaches to evolve into bigger and stronger roaches. Survival of the fittest at its best. In the beginning of the year, they were actually pretty small and slow. Towards the end of the year, they had gotten much bigger in size, and I'm pretty sure some of them were starting to evolve wing-like structures on their backs. Thankfully I'm not going to be around when they finally do evolve the ability to fly. Seeing as how the feeble attempts of the apartment service were only making the roaches stronger, we had to take matters into our own hands. This marked the beginning of a longstanding war between us and the roach colony. We bought traps and our own spray, but the roaches had numbers on their side. Clearly, a large scale attack was needed. And so about halfway through the year, The Purge happened - we cleaned everything possible, sprayed in every corner, and for once we thought everything was going to be ok. We slept peacefully that night. Unfortunately, it was a false sense of comfort. The next day, the roaches were already back. I'm pretty sure all we did was anger them. And so we conceded to a truce - they stay in the kitchen and come out only at night, and we'd just let them be. This worked for a while, but blatant violations of the truce soon began, and we were powerless to stop it, still being demoralized from the failed Purge. It got to the point that sometimes I would open up a drawer, watch a cockroach scramble out from inside one of my bowls, and be like "eh." By the end of the year, we knew that we had clearly lost the war. Whenever I would go out into the kitchen at night, I would give the roaches a 10 second grace period after I turned on the lights to run and hide in their little corners, so I could at least pretend like they weren't there. Towards the end of the year though, they just stayed where they were after I turned on the lights, mocking me, knowing that I was defeated and powerless...
For the price we paid, the apartment was nothing short of robbery. There was ONE redeeming factor about the place, and that was that we had free fire in the fireplace. You could flip a lightswitch, and a fire would come on in the fireplace! Sometimes I would turn on the fire even if it was hot, because it was the only good thing about the apartment, and I wanted to cling to that light in dark times.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Summit BLUE!
I just got back a few days ago from Summit BLUE, and let me tell you, it was AMAZING. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this was my favorite Unicamp session I've been too thusfar out of my 3 years of doing camp. And what makes that even more crazy is that I didn't know most of the counselors until the day before camp started, since I floated into the session. Despite that though, I felt really close to most of the counselors by the end of the week; they were all so nice and accepting, and I felt really comfortable around them even though I had only known them for a few days. My CO-counselors were also great - Slim Jim, who I had known from before, and Scissor Kicks, who I basically met at camp. I honestly didn't know how it was going to be working with them, but it turned out really great.
What really made this session amazing, though, was the kids. Well, I shouldn't really say kids, since they were all high-schoolers. But it was seriously the easiest time I've had taking care of a unit. My cabin was HILARIOUS - they always made me laugh, either with them or at them. Mostly at them. For example:Slim Jim: "Dude you have a milk mustache."
Lupio: "Where?"
Slim Jim: A milk MUSTACHE
Lupio: I know I know, WHERE?
-_-
Censored (commenting on Lupio): Dude you suck at telling stories. You're like 'So I walked into the store, and yea.'
Lio (commenting on a girl): She doesn't turn me down, she turns me on.
Besides being funny though, they're all really good kids, and I feel like they were able to get a lot of the leadership programming we had for them throughout the week. I've already talked to most of them after the week at camp, and I really hope to stay in contact with them.
In addition to having a great cabin of my own, we were fortunate enough to be paired up with Cabin 4 (girls unit) for a lot of our activities. Collectively, we were known as the Fo Shizzle Fo Sho, and were the self-proclaimed best cabin pair on the campsite. We did our talent show skit together, climbed through spider webs together, and when it came time for each unit to do a skit at Closing Campfire, we independently came up with songs for each other!
All in all, a great week at camp. Usually I have some point in the week where I hit a low, but this week I had no lows, just relative levels of high. Unfortunately 2 of my campers had fevers on the last day, and a lot of counselors/campers ended getting sick as well, including myself. I call it the Blue Fever. But it was definitely worth it spending a week with these kids.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Graduation
And so the time has passed.. I have now officially graduated from UCLA! And so begins a new chapter in my life. For the first time in 18 years (I'm counting preschool and K grade too!), I will not be in school. I've been going to school for so long, it's hard to even imagine a life without school. I feel like school has always been the anchor in my life - it's always there, and your schedule revolves around it - studying for tests, going to classes, etc. It's going to take some adjustment now that school isn't there anymore. There's also that uncertainty factor now - I don't know exactly what I'm doing next year, and it kind of scares me. I'm still in the search for a job, which I will need if I want to live in LA.
Anyways, I've been pretty busy since graduation. The Commencement Ceremony on Friday was pretty good - the speaker, Brad Delson, turned out to be a lot better than I expected. Even though he was last minute, he turned out to be really funny. The Saturday Psych Department Ceremony was good too, except it took forever to read everyone's names. Then my family had a nice little get-together back at my home. Sunday we drove back to LA in the morning to move everything out of my apartment, and then I drove back to LA again Sunday night for Unicamp Orientation the next day. Theeen on Wednesday I went to Lake Havasu, and I got back yesterday! Whoo! And now I'm at home and I can kinda relax for a little bit. And write blogs. :-)
Anyways, I've been pretty busy since graduation. The Commencement Ceremony on Friday was pretty good - the speaker, Brad Delson, turned out to be a lot better than I expected. Even though he was last minute, he turned out to be really funny. The Saturday Psych Department Ceremony was good too, except it took forever to read everyone's names. Then my family had a nice little get-together back at my home. Sunday we drove back to LA in the morning to move everything out of my apartment, and then I drove back to LA again Sunday night for Unicamp Orientation the next day. Theeen on Wednesday I went to Lake Havasu, and I got back yesterday! Whoo! And now I'm at home and I can kinda relax for a little bit. And write blogs. :-)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Almost there!
Whoops.
It looks like I haven't written here for a long time. I think that's actually an indication of how crazy/fun my last quarter here at UCLA has been. It definitely was my busiest quarter here, what with Unicamp meetings/socials, Mentorship coming to an end, and having all the fun I could possibly cram into 10 weeks. And oh yea, the occasional studying. But I honestly tried to keep that to a minimum this quarter.
I had my last lecture at UCLA last Thursday, and I'm proud to say I stayed awake through the whole thing. This week will be my last week of finals, and I graduate on Friday/Saturday. As for the whole what I'm doing after college thing, I still don't know what I'm doing in terms of a job or living.. BUT, I do know that I am going to be the Program Director for the Mentorship Program here at UCLA. I'm going to be taking a year off to apply to grad schools, and I can't think of anything I would rather do. Now the only problem is finding a job to pay rent. Ahhh!
This last quarter has really made me realize a few things about myself:
1. I'm happiest when I'm making others happy. As corny as that may sound, it's true. Making the people close to you happy is, in my opinion, one of the most rewarding things you can do, and so I'm going to try to do more of that.
2. I need people. And by people, I mean people that I can call close friends, talk to about anything, just hang out, etc. Having people like this in your life makes it SO much better. There are some really special bonds I have made here, and I really hope to maintain those after I graduate.
3. Being spontaneous is fun. I wish I had realized this earlier. This past quarter I've been more spontaneous, like doing random things at 2 in the morning with people. Again, you have to find those people that will be spontaneous with you. :)
4. The Universe is big. Ok, so I've known this for a while, but I finally took an Astro class for fun, and it really gave me a new perspective. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to put human beings in perspective with the Universe: to think of how the earth seems so big to us, yet we are SO tiny in comparison with everything else. I can only wrap my thoughts around it for a few seconds though, because it seriously blows my mind. The fact that life was able to form from the beginning materials of the Universe is in itself an amazing feat. So, kudos to you, Universe.
So yes, those are the revelations I've made this past quarter, and I am going to make an effort to incorporate them into my post-graduation life.
It looks like I haven't written here for a long time. I think that's actually an indication of how crazy/fun my last quarter here at UCLA has been. It definitely was my busiest quarter here, what with Unicamp meetings/socials, Mentorship coming to an end, and having all the fun I could possibly cram into 10 weeks. And oh yea, the occasional studying. But I honestly tried to keep that to a minimum this quarter.
I had my last lecture at UCLA last Thursday, and I'm proud to say I stayed awake through the whole thing. This week will be my last week of finals, and I graduate on Friday/Saturday. As for the whole what I'm doing after college thing, I still don't know what I'm doing in terms of a job or living.. BUT, I do know that I am going to be the Program Director for the Mentorship Program here at UCLA. I'm going to be taking a year off to apply to grad schools, and I can't think of anything I would rather do. Now the only problem is finding a job to pay rent. Ahhh!
This last quarter has really made me realize a few things about myself:
1. I'm happiest when I'm making others happy. As corny as that may sound, it's true. Making the people close to you happy is, in my opinion, one of the most rewarding things you can do, and so I'm going to try to do more of that.
2. I need people. And by people, I mean people that I can call close friends, talk to about anything, just hang out, etc. Having people like this in your life makes it SO much better. There are some really special bonds I have made here, and I really hope to maintain those after I graduate.
3. Being spontaneous is fun. I wish I had realized this earlier. This past quarter I've been more spontaneous, like doing random things at 2 in the morning with people. Again, you have to find those people that will be spontaneous with you. :)
4. The Universe is big. Ok, so I've known this for a while, but I finally took an Astro class for fun, and it really gave me a new perspective. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to put human beings in perspective with the Universe: to think of how the earth seems so big to us, yet we are SO tiny in comparison with everything else. I can only wrap my thoughts around it for a few seconds though, because it seriously blows my mind. The fact that life was able to form from the beginning materials of the Universe is in itself an amazing feat. So, kudos to you, Universe.
So yes, those are the revelations I've made this past quarter, and I am going to make an effort to incorporate them into my post-graduation life.
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