So after my initial post I didn’t think about following up on it. This thing takes a little more effort than I thought. I pretty much made it because David Uyan was at the time and I figured I might as well, too. But I lost interest pretty quickly.
Well, so I’m back, permanently, I hope, since 27 May 04. What a year. I still don’t remember a lot of what happened since 10 Feb 04, but that’s probably a good thing. I’m gonna try and post some pictures online but that won’t happen till I settle in Berkeley after 2 weeks. Of course you can always visit my a little outdated yahoo photos.
Been pretty busy since I came back. First off I got my permit. I never had a permit or a license before and I think 20 was a good year to get one. Of course I failed the first permit test (7 out of possible 6 misses) so I took it right after again and got 5 wrong. So after 2 weeks of training I went for the behind the wheel test (for 18 and over we don’t have to wait 6 months). Turns out the registration on my parents’ car was expired. So I set up another appointment, 2 more weeks. Turns out one of the stop lights on the car didn’t work. Another appointment, 2 more weeks. The third time really is the charm. Not having even made it out of the freaken DMV with at least a driving test, I was really anxious about the third try. Well, it turned out that the DMV was short of 3 people that day, so they really hurried the test. I got the black lady I heard everyone complain about, but she was really nice to me. I got 9 wrong on the test (out of possible 16 I think) and got my license on my first real try on the 30 Jul 04 at Bellflower. Today, my mom actually let me drive the Previa, uninsured, to Cerritos College and back. Good move because if I took the COW like I usually do, then I would have felt really bad about going to class when the teacher didn’t even show up today.
So I’ve been going to school, too. Started sometime in July, I think the 6th, and been busy with that ever since. Macroeconomics and Physical Anthropology were my first choices, and I was gonna take Sociology, but I really don’t like getting up to get to school at 8. It’s really tough for me to concentrate and it’s definitely harder for me to absorb the material. Takes me a long time just to try and get the sentences out. The other day I studied like hell for hours for the Anthropology test and still got the same score that the guy next to me got, and he didn’t even study.
Been practicing the guitar, of course. It’s been one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my life. There was a lot of downtime overseas and of course it was a hassle carrying this bulky case and the guitar around all the time (I moved at least 12 times in the last 12 months of deployment). But damn, it was so worth it. Right now I’m learning Paranoid Android by Radiohead in their album OK Computer, and it is probably the hardest song I’ll have to learn for a while. I got the picking down in about 2 weeks, but I tried singing and playing at the same time… and the picking is way too fast and the singing is way too slow. So I pretty much relearned picking again so I can coordinate the singing part with the picking part and learn when to come in, when not to… just really complicated song. Jason Shinar, David Uyan and I are thinking about just creating a random band just to jam, not to go crazy public, but maybe we’ll perform sometime like those random bands at colleges and towne center performances and stuff. Maybe Jason’s roommate Vince can be the drummer. Still haven’t come up with the name of the band yet, and we’re really just starting off, need to learn some songs and learn different parts of songs and then bring that together whenever we can meet up. Which really is difficult because David goes to UCI, Vince and Jason goes to UCSD and I live in Berkeley for most of the year.
So I suffer from TMJ (or TMD). It’s this condition where the temporomandibular joint (the joint where your lower and upper jaw comes together just under your ear) is malaligned, and it pops in and out. It’s like the shoulder popping in and out like a ball and socket, except that when it does, it crunches the nerves that run in between and causes swelling, loss of hearing, and of course loss of appetite because it hurts to eat. I went to war with this thing and it got really aggravated. During the war they actually managed to try and get me soft and hard mouth guards to wear at night, but to no avail. I took several pills of varying doses, including ibuprofen (motrine), naproxen, elavil, toradol, zoloft, and finally celebrex. So I go to the dentist and they say I have to see a physician because it’s a joint, not teeth, problem. Then I go to see a physician and they tell me to go see the dentist because it’s a dental problem. So I’m running back and forth because really no one really knows about it and how to fix it. So I said screw it, and I went to a civilian Korean doctor. The woman that’s taking care of me has been specializing in TMJ for the past 10 years and says she’s never seen a worse case. They took an X-Ray of my face from the front and my right jaw is collapsed and my left jaw is hanging so there’s a centimeter of discrepency between the lower right part of my face and the lower left part of my face (So my face is actually longer on the left part by a centimeter). My nose is crooked too because of it. My lower back pain is getting worse because of it. My neck is as flat as a pen when it should have a curvature. So the dentist got me this clip to go on my lower teeth and at first it felt like eating with braces, it really hurt. But after about a week now, I’m kind of getting used to it, although grinding food has become really tough. It’s costing a lot of money, but after a year’s worth of deployment where no doctor was able to help, I feel relieved. Very relieved.
Jason biked to UC San Diego from La Palma about a week ago. I wanted to try and do the same thing when he told me the night before, so I decided to skip the class the day of (the teacher ended up not coming anyway, I learned later) and prepared. Of course that meant sleeping at 2 AM to get up at 530 to take off at 0600. (Bah, screw the clock system!) Well anyway, we made it to the beach, past Seal, towards Laguna, but there was this ‘alternate bike route’ that we saw and so we followed that. Turns out we were heading into a peninsula on Balboa St. So we turned around and I’m feeling the heat. Jason’s not. So around UCI, before Laguna Beach, I call David and ask him if I can hang around with him for the day because I love him so much. Well, he was nice enough to let me hang afterwards. I made 37 miles by 1100. Jason rode on to SD, got there around 1600, 109 miles! I’ll keep working my way up there and I’ll ride with him next time. It just so happened that David’s roommate happened to live in Cerritos and he happened to have a car and he happened to be driving back up on the same night. So I got very, very lucky indeed. I just returned Jason’s dad’s bike last night.
Matt Lee came back recently from Air Assault school. Congratulations Matt for conquering the fear of height, 12 mile march in 3 hours with 40 pounds on your back, thunderstorms and heat. Well anyway, we decided to go up to Berkeley the next day. Really random because the random bike thing happened just a day before that. So I’m thinking well, maybe I should stop being so spontaneous. But I decided to go up anyway. So after my DMV driving test at 0930 at Bellflower on Friday the 30 Jul, we rode up to Berkeley, having cancelled my dental appointment and my lunch meeting with a church elder on Saturday and Sunday. But it all worked out because Matt’s sister is in Berkeley doing an internship at Walnut Creek, he wanted to go see her, Tiffany wanted to see Matt, I wanted to go see Tiffany, I needed to move my stuff over there (which meant my parents didn’t have to drive on the 16 Aug and I can fly up there instead now), and of course, Jenny Sinson, Cher, Jeanne, and Grace happened to go up on the same day. What an interesting weekend to say the least. I let Jason borrow my camera for the Europe trip and so I wasn’t able to take a lot of pictures (none … actually), but thankfully everyone else in the room seemed to have one. I think by far Jenny looks the most different from high school but all the girls … I mean women, looked more beautiful than before. I got a little buzz because at one point I was drinking for Jenny, which just meant more alcohol for me. The ride back was actually only 5 and a half hours long, the shortest ride back ever for me (I’ve done the round trip about 6 times now), the record short before that was 7 hours one way.
Today I set up DSL at my parents’ house and actually ran into Lisa Yi (USC) at this random tea place I went with my mom after lunch. Amazing what 2 years can do to someone…