gonna miss these days

the handful of times
when i was completely alone
completely
alone
and had to figure things out
college is where you learn to eat on your own
digest
another day

when i had hella eggs
cuz eggs were cheap
and i could cook an omelet
in 2 minutes
with my eyes closed
behind my back

when i had to stay up
so much
that sunday monday and tuesday
all seem like one

r e a l l y l o n g d a y

when all i had was cold water
so just shower faster

when even though i hated ipods
i had one
so imma tune out the world
amel can sing to just me

when berkeley winters are hella cold
and berkeley apartments are hella old
too old to know the globe is warming
and that those hella old heaters
in those hella cold apartments
inefficient and expensive
so this is how imma keep my face
warm

gonna miss these days

eye-dent-it-ee

(i get a lot of self reflection time during school vacations, or just whenever i get to go home to pacifica. i'm pretty sure almost all of the posts i've written about myself have come from my computer in pacifica.)


i think i've said somewhere before that, even though i'm pretty sure that all my friends and families accept me for who i am, i've never felt that there has been a group of people that completely understand me. (there are some specific people that i'm i feel completely comfortable around, but i guess i've watched too many Friends episodes or something, and sometimes have longed for that over-idealistic "gang") and the wannabe-artsy part of me used to think that this was because i have a super over the top complex personality, or some BS like that. but now i'm pretty sure that i feel it's that way, because i don't completely understand myself.

that's all, i think i'll have to marinate on that thought for awhile.

it's kinna funny how i started thinking about this: i was at thanksgiving dinner with my cousins and we were all kinna just sitting around, and i said something that i've been thinking about for awhile,

me: "when does everybody feel their cleanest? like, that feeling that you don't wanna touch anything cuz it'll make you dirty again?"

(confused looks, and silence)

me: "i feel my cleanest when i take a dump and shower right after. after that shower, and until i get sweaty or dirty, go to bathroom, or fart, i feel like i'm as clean I as can be, cuz i feel clean on the inside AND on the outside"

cousins: "where did that come from?"

me:*sigh*


i am really happy with my life, though. happy enough to go around twice.


what's up kat? you're cool too, thanks for always being down to get hella drunk on the seriously the most random nights possible, and having hella fun doing it

every drank is unique

so i was pretty thirsty and i was looking at this glass half full of juice, but i knew that that glass was sittin on that table for awhile, and i'm like "i'm not gonna drink that lukewarm shit". and at that time, i was thinking to myself, "there's no drank worth drinking lukewarm! it either has to be cold or hot. ain't no such thing as halfway drinks!"

but then i started thinking more, what drink are you supposed to drink lukewarm?

and like it always does, vino came to answer my questions. although the optimal temperature for serving wine is a couple degrees below room temperature, vino is the only drink i can think of that is served somewhere close to room temperature. and thanks to Peezy and a yearly tradition, i have a couple more wines under my belt.

i can't remember the name of the red that was delish, but that's ok. the world of wine is vast.


anyhow, speakin of dranks, i've always been intrigued with what constitutes a "manly" drink. i mean, how are some beers manly, and some not manly? according to my recent research:
- fat tires are manly, blue moons are not.
- also, martini's are more manly than (real) daiquiris, unless that shit is an apple-tini, don't be drinkin that MAN!
- gin martini's are more manly manly than vodka martini's, unless that shit is a gin-apple-tini, don't be drinkin that MAN!
- long islands are the standard manly way to get drunk
- patron is gangster manly
- guiness is irish manly
- heineken is another standard manly beer


one of my favorite non alcoholic drinks is swamp water.
i think im gonna make that shit right now

joshua is currently wondering about this

When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system.

i think i'd like to mention this article in honor of my purchase of frontline's new album. i also wanna mention frontline cuz i'm 99% positive that i saw Left purchasing some frozen yogurt behind me at michelle's on durant. i wasn't sure it was him at the time cuz i didn't know he had a mohawk.

but in all seriousness, ridiculous is the word that comes to mind when i think about this law. minimum 5 yrs for trying to sell two sugar packets worth of crack, 5 grams. in order to receive the same penalty for selling powdered cocaine, 500 grams. a hundred times more. frickin ridiculous.

Since crack is made by cooking powder cocaine with baking soda or another base when it reaches the street retail level, the 100-to-1 ratio has served to exact harsher punishments on low-level dealers than the kingpins supplying the raw material. According to USSC data, low-level crack sellers are punished 300 times more severely than high-level, international cocaine traffickers on an imprisonment-per-gram basis.

so uhh, it's more important to get to poor crack dealers, because, uhhh, in the bigger scheme, they're the bigger bad guys, bigger than the doods that supply the cocaine.. that sounds right, right?

at least we know whitney houston won't EVER get caught with crack. why you ask?



cuz crack is wack!

word??..

pancakes are surely one of my favorite foods. i love making them, i love eating them, and i even enjoy cleaning my griddle after i've made a batch.

one of my earliest memories as a child is a saturday morning with my mom letting me stand on a chair next to her and letting me flip the pancakes that she was cooking. we used bisquick back then, because even though she cooked my favorite versions of anything pilipino, there wasn't really anything close to a homemade pancake recipe in her head of cuisine pilipino. but that's ok, cuz my mom's a savv and eventually she got her wings with some american cuisine, and now she makes some crackin oatmeal pancakes. how crackin? so crackin that she made me put crackin and oatmeal together in the same sentence. word.

i, on the other hand, have not yet learned how to play around with my pancake batter recipe. once in awhile i'll dot the pancakes with blueberries or chocolate/peanut butter chips, but i never have ventured into the vast world of pancake variety, like using milk instead of buttermilk, or changing my kind of flour. i follow the alton brown buttermilk pancake recipe (this was before i discovered he was an ass), cuz even though the batter comes out HELLA THICK, it produces some thick and fluffy pancakes, that are hella filling.

i'm not sure but i don't think you're supposed to drink wine for breakfast, but if you were to pair a wine with my pancakes, i think it'd have to be a white wine. even though i just said the pancakes come out of the heartier side, and i think you're supposed to match red wine with hearty meals, i just don't think red wine and pancakes is a good match. so white wine it is.

which one?
try a chardonnay.

in fact, try the super-ultra-rare (as in, doesn't exist) ratatouille chardonnay. word

i do hope that my love for homemade pancakes prevents me from resorting to using this peculiar product, the Batter Blaster.
word??

thissss weeeeeeeek

the semester has been pretty challenging , but i really have learned to appreciate school for what it is. i mean, i get to come into class and learn something new every time. i know that when i (hopefully) start working in industry, that that will almost never be the case.

today i got blasted by my professor on my sloppy contribution to the presentation. and he was right, it was pretty sloppy, and the part i hate about it is that it didn't really represent how much time i put into all the other work for the lab, and that sucks, because the professor didn't see my last presentation which went a lot better, and prolly won't see my next one, which i have promised to improve upon. 

i feel that pretty much 90% of your monetary success in the professional world is dictated on how well you professionally present yourself. and although i've admitted to myself that this is a pretty big problem for me, i have never strived to improve that aspect of myself while in school. i really hate how it has to work that way. i mean, i know it doesn't have to be this way, and that you can have success by "just being yourself", but more often than not, people tell me that the more interviews that you do, the more you'll know what to say because you'll know what they're looking for. to me, that sounds kinna like you'll know exactly what to say to get the job, regardless of how qualified you really are. 

then what's the point? what's the point of trying so hard to do well in school, when all this studying to be able to work as engineer comes down to how well i've learned to present myself? we only take one class on technical communication, which i guess counts as professional training, but that was an easy class. so still, i'm pretty much lost when it comes to being able to professionally present myself.

that being said, i would like to point something out about berkeley engineering as the gold standard for studying engineering. if you look, most of the ranking done for engineering schools is usually actually ranking the engineering graduate schools, and not the undergrad. and while this high rank distinction for the grad schools might translate to a good undergrad program. that's not always the case. and in my opinion, for the most part berkeley focuses more on engineering research, and not engineering practice. this is good because many important technological discoveries happen because of research, but bad because i still don't have a solid idea of what it means to be an engineer, as opposed to just a scientist, or other technician. 

that being said, sleep has been irregular this week. and i haven't gotten much fresh air. and i'm staring at a computer for prolly close to 80% of my awake hours.

i have managed to improve my omelet technique, and my biscuit technique as well. i have a bottle of 2006 charles shaw merlot that i've been wanting to open for awhile now but i don't have a bottle opener in the apartment! maybe i'll start buying the twist cap wines, since i prolly won't be able to tell the difference in my young sommelier career. (i spelled that right on the first try)

can't wait for the weekend. i love gameday (food)!