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| whut the eff xanga is crazy now.
but anyway it's been a long time since i last updated, but thats because so much
has happened. i've been a very busy and productive (arguable) guy
recently:
- i got my motorcycle license, which was really fun, despite having
to practice riding in full motorcycle gear for 6 hours a day in 105
degree socal sun. i feel really sorry for whoever wears that helmet
after me because sweat was literally streaming off my forehead... but
then again maybe that's what the guy who used it before me thought.
- i bought my motorcycle
(1988 kawasaki ninja ex500) from this person off craigs list in san
jose. it's all black, and all my gear (helmet gloves jacket etc.) is
black too. it's so sexy. riding it back was scary as hell, because i
had never even ridden on the streets before and i had to ride for an
hour on the freeway at nighttime. everytime i went past a truck and its
giant shockwave of wind hit me was... interesting for sure. its leaking
oil (so i'm having all my tools brought up from home so i can work on
it), which the seller failed to notify me of, so during my ride back
the freaking thing stalled out on me going 85 in 5th gear. that was
definitely an "oh shit" moment when i gassed the throttle and...
nothing happened. and then this bastard in like a 240sx decides to
ignore my hazard lights and pretty much almost kills me (watching a car slam
on the breaks and come within 5 feet of you your first time on the
freeway on a bike was pretty much so nerve-racking i almost started
laughing [i think its a defense mechanism of mine]).
- I joined Delta Sigma Pi so i've been super busy lately. We had our first preliminary pledge meeting and my
schedule is sooo packed. Things seem pretty hardcore... but knowing me
i'll still somehow find a way to waste time hanging out randomly in
anyone and everyone's apartment when they're trying to study. I'm
really glad I joined though i think this is the first responsible
decision (in relation to my future) that i've made in recent memory. on
a happier note, i love my pledgeclass; everyone is super chill and it
seems like we'll all get along really well. we have our "pinning
ceremony" on tuesday... i'm pretty excited but i might have to miss
part of small group which sucks.
- I am speed master. If you want to play (and lose) go ahead and challenge me. HA
So yeah... I've been busy / will be busy like crazy for the rest of
this semester. If you guys see more posts from me anytime soon... then
that means my new and improved time management skills are... neither new nor
improved. Haha I'm like a week ahead in all of my classes... for those
of you that know me... don't laugh; victor ho is turning over a new leaf.
It's sad that I'm 19 and my hero is a 6 year old girl:
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| *edit* holy shit this entry is long... sorry.
I had this idea in the back of my head that I'd been toying with. For
those of you who don't know berkeley, there are homeless people
everywhere. They just stop and chill where they please. I wondered: how did they get there; what's it like?
So thursday to saturday i lived at people's park with the
bums. That first night there was pretty shitty. I had my things arranged nicely in this spot of dirt i had picked
out in the corner of the park. Around 9:30 I decide to try and go to
sleep. The ground was pretty hard but it's not really that different
from camping (except for the tent part) so things are going along
pretty chill. Pretty soon,
I'm blissfully asleep.
About a half hour later, this lady starts shining a flashlight in my
eyes and tells me that I have to get out of the park immediately. I
gather up all my stuff and I'm pretty confused, but mostly just tired.
I talk to this old man (I later found out his name is "quandary". He
was trying to make up a name for himself because he thinks your given
name is not nearly as good as one you choose yourself, but he couldn't
think of a good name so... it was a quandary) and ask him why it was
exactly that I had to get out. First, he told me to say "I hate you" to
him (this is a long story). He explains that at 10 o'clock you must
leave the
premises or else you could receive a "lodging ticket" for loitering on
public property. He details to me this whole elaborate system where
you get two warnings at each address, and how he has to move from place
to place to avoid getting ticketed by cops having a bad day. His
knowledge of city zoning was pretty insane, and he knew exactly where
along the sidewalks the address changed.
After I got settled again on the edge of the
sidewalk, a church van rolled by asking if anyone needed blankets for
the night. "Can you eat a blanket?" someone asked. I cried then I think
for the first time since they were about to kill the
big black man in Green Mile. Maybe I shouldn't say that because it
makes me sound like a pansy, but i was completely overwhelmed by how
crappy
things were. In my life I worry about midterms and cute girls, in
their world they are preoccupied with zoning laws and simple
sustenance. Sleeping on the dirt sucks enough already; do they really
have to kick them out onto the sidewalk?
Around 2 in the morning the cops came along again and kicked all the
homeless people at the park. Jandre works patrol, and I ran into him
driving around in his security van. He saw me standing there with my
sleeping bag surrounded by homeless people and he was just like...
victor what the heck. After he left, the bums were eyeing me all
suspiciously. "You know the patrol??" a guy inquired. "Naw, dogg", I
stammered "that foo just called me over to talk I don't know why".
Another awkward moment happened when I got a phone call while I was
talking to some guy about his strange philosophy in life. "I don't
believe in God but I believe in miracles" he said. "This one time when
I was high on acid I said to myself 'I would really like a coke right
now' and all of a sudden there was a coke in my hand. Now that was a
fuckin miracle." The homeless
people were all around me and right about then my pants start
vibrating. That
was pretty much an "oh shit" moment as I pretended to look around
confusedly and repeated "i wonder where that strange sound is coming
from" as nonchalantly as i could. <== Thanks Lauri.
That first night, I realized many things. I always thought the homeless were just horrible and
lazy people who pretty much failed at life, but I was shocked to see
how incredibly genious some of them were. There was this guy muttering
conspiracy theories, who spoke non-stop for hours on end busting out
SAT words like a Whitney nerd at an Model United Nations conference
(disclaimer: I'm not insulting anyone I was in MUN too); his brain ran
at 100 miles a minute in so many directions at once that one day he just
snapped. Some of the people there, believe it or not, are there by
choice. Like "quandary" (he wanted me to be discreet with his real
name; i had to "push" [very long story] with him in order to get him to
tell it to me) who had worked 10 years for the new york times and
was here of his own free will. He had been an English major and had
once been married with a kid, but here he was sitting with absolutely
nothing but an unnecissarily large vocabulary, and he was happy. An
unnecessary strain on society? Perhaps; but none-the-less very
interesting.
Ok damn. That was only the first day but I showered and I still
smell, so just one last thing. You know how you're always scared to
give
homeless people money because you think they're gonna buy drugs with
it?
They do.
===================
The following are obligatory Spirit West Coast pictures. These pictures
all belong to the same people so you are probably seeing them for like
the 5th time now but oh well. See them again:
Us trying to figure out why the tent wont stay up:
Me and Paul in front of the giant Dunlop tire:
John trying to be thug with his Nelly bandaid but more importantly, why does Steve have his pants unzipped in the background?
My hat completely blocking Jess as we take the "trip" bus to the concert stage:
Josh wearing some queer ozzy ozbourne (however you spell his name) glasses:
Jeremy Camp can have my children:
David Crowder can't quite but i like him too:
Playing rock paper scissors to see who gets to drink the raw leftover hotdog juices from the bag:
Paul's expression after he lost and drank it:
I caught a monkey:
A quiet moment of tenderness:
Eating lunch at Carmel beach:
Yvonne and Esther trying to look cute:
Sand Castle:
Making Eugene into a crab after we forced him into a hole and buried him:
Jandre messing with Eugene while he was stuck in the sand:
The boyfriend Debbie made for herself since she can't find a real one:
Beach Pyramid:
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| Today was a much needed reprieve from what has been a week of ludicrous
boredom. I went to the A's game with Steve Choi and Daniel Han.
Haha they lost to the white sox... but i don't really follow baseball
so the significance of that, if there is any, escapes me. Oh and i
found out
that "A's" stands for "Athletics". What a crappy name!! No wonder they
lost. But then i was thinking and i guess its better than like... being
named after a lake. and not even like a famous or particularly
good-looking lake, but just lakes in general.
After that, I met judy in san francisco cause she's up here for some
boring family business trip. only 8 year olds go with their parents on
family business vacations... but yeah... we saw these crazy spraypaint
art people. they like... dance to
trance music and just spray and at the end it looks craaazzyyy. what
talent. they don't belong on the streets at all if i were rich i'd hire
one just to sit in a room of my house and dance and paint so if i got
bored i could just go watch them. but aside from that, wow fisherman's
wharf sucks after 10. it's full of people loitering outside closed
shops. except for the ice cream stores... but its much too cold to eat
icecream that late (in norcal where everything is cold) and even
the cool
sea lions i saw tanning on the sidewalk last time arn't
there. annnddd i forgot to get my ticket validated
(well cause i also didnt eat so i guess i couldnt have even if i
remembered) so parking cost 6 bucks. what a bitch. haha. but all in
good
fun.
now that all the excitement has died down, i'm back to being a hermit
sitting at home doing geeky things like updating my xanga and playing
video games. At least my cooking is getting better as i resort to it
more and more when i find myself hungry at night yet too pathetically
lazy to drive somewhere. i've eaten scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, or spaghetti
nearly everyday so far because that's all i can make.
finally, steve directed my attention to a particularly awesome accessory:
all that can be yours for only $34.99. thug lyfe baller fo'real. i want one. haha maybe if i were black i could pull that off...
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| *edit* my phone is fricken baller. i let it sit in the sun for an hour and after all the water evaporated everything works now.
today i dropped my phone in the toilet. don't ask me how i did it it
just somehow happened. now the buttons on the top right corner don't
work, which includes the button to pick up phone calls. i can see when
someone calls me but i just have to look at it helplessly until it
stops ringing. this sucks.
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