Tuesday, 27 October 2009

  • Remember in middle school when Xanga was such hot stuff? Since I still use the same account, I'm subscribed to 54 different accounts. FIFTY-FOUR! Christ. You know how many of them currently regularly update? Three. Pathetic.

    I was such a good blogger last year! I annoyingly updated a million times a week. Now, I'm almost completely neglecting this little thing, and I'm scared I'm going to be just another addition to the huge flock that leaves Xanga.

    The reason I haven't been updating is:

    1) All of my creative writing energy goes elsewhere.
    There's my Daily Cal venture, which thankfully ends in December. It's way more time consuming than I had anticipated. Blech.
    And then there's the Friendship Love email project, in which I basically write whatever I would normally write here.

    2) All of my writing energy goes elsewhere.
    Papers. So. Many. Of. Them. Due. Every. Week.
    Sigh.

    3) All of my energy goes elsewhere.
    Walking to class is such a hassle! I can't believe that I used to hate driving to school. What's wrong with me? When driving, I just sit on my ass for about five minutes, bend my wrists a bit, and I'm there. Now I actually have to move my legs, force my thighs to climb up the millions of inclines that stand between me and Wheeler.

    4) When I do have extra energy, I spend it eating and playing tetris.


    Anyway, this is my attempt to not kill my blog... which I guess will inevitably happen within the next few years.

Monday, 12 October 2009

  • College is making me feel unhealthily inferior. In my nutritional science discussion, the GSI casually asked us, "So who's the woman who is a big proponent for the organic food movement?" and I instantly thought, "Kate Gosselin!" as the rest of the class replied "Michelle Obama." Then the GSI sort of chuckled, as if saying, "that-answer-was-so-ridiculously-obvious-and-if-you-didn't-know-the-answer-let-alone-think-of-a-C-list-reality-slash-tabloid-star-instead-you-should-get-out-of-this-class-immediately."

    I have my midterm for my Hollywood history class this Wednesday. I enrolled in this class even though I get absolutely NO credit for it (since I already fulfill my historial breadth requirement with my major) because I thought that it would be super fun and easy. I mean, watching movies and talking about them? Hellzyeah! (Okay, I haven't gotten so dumb that I say phrases like that.)

    It is my hardest class. We have a horrific amount of reading to do, and all of the articles manage to be incredibly dry. The mandatory movie screenings also take a ridiculous amount of time to get to- 25 minutes, all uphill. And then by the time I sit down for the movie, I'll all sweaty and exhausted, so I don't even pay attention. It's a terrible system, really.

    I've also run into way too many Molecular Cell Biology majors, all of whom manage to inadvertantly make me feel incredibly dumb. Like, they'll crack some nerdy joke about keratin, and I'm forced to laugh along even though I have no idea what the hell they just said.

    I also went over my 12GB bandwidth last week because I spent wasted a lot of time catching up on all of my television shows on Hulu. Everyone else in my hall was studying. I was watching Desperate Housewives (not even a respectable show).

    Whatever. I'm going to go eat a bowl of cereal now, because I can't be bothered to make the 5 minute walk down to the dining commons to get a proper dinner. You see, if I were doing well in my nutritional science class, I would probably know more benefits of eating a healty meal, but since I'm not, I have no motivation. Kashi cereal is delicious, anyway! Yummers.

Monday, 05 October 2009

  • Since I got here, I've been haunted with a constant yearn to cook. Oh, what I would give to have a fully stocked kitchen and a spatula in my hand. I salivate at the thought.

    It also doesn't help that I have constant cravings for foods that will never be offered at the dining commons. (Heirloom tomatoes on slices of toasted artisan bread drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette and topped with fresh basil, anyone? Don't even bother mentioning the fresh mozzarella cheese.)

    It sucks because I mainly crave very simple dishes that are impossible to cook in the little kitchen on the ground floor of my hall.

    Egg fried rice- delicious and out of reach. Why? These are things that I would need to purchase to make what should be a simple dish made only of kitchen staples.
    • one dozen eggs (what would I do with the other eleven?)
    • a full bag of rice (I only need half of a cup!)
    • a bottle of soy sauce (too bad they don't sell it by the teaspoon)
    • a bottle of sesame oil (see above)
    • a container of kosher salt (see above)
    • a container of black pepper (see above)
    • a pot or rice cooker
    • a frying pan
    • a spatula
    Ridiculous! Too bad, egg fried rice. You won't be in my belly for at least another seven weeks.

    So, I've bookmarked just about a hundred recipes that I've stumbled across in the past six weeks. I probably won't have time to make anything during my Thanksgiving break (four days and the weekend before my nutritional science exam and the due dates of my political science and college writing term papers), so that means I'll need to wait until the end of December. Sob sob.

    Oh, and I was thisclose to buying a pineapple two days ago, before I came to my senses and realized that I lacked knives, a cutting board, and the ability to finish the entire thing in one day. I guess I'm stuck with the apples I've been stealing from Crossroads.

Friday, 25 September 2009

  • Yesterday, I got a piece of mail from a reader of my column. It was... interesting.
    I skimmed over it last night and just tossed it aside as a dumb piece of hate mail. Inevitable, I suppose.
    But then I read it over again just now, and I realized that this guy actually claimed to like my article! He just has absolutely NO SENSE OF HUMOR. I was hesitant to post the entire letter, because the guy sounds nice enough, but it was just too hilarious and ridiculous to not write about.

    Here is the column he was referring to:
    http://www.dailycal.org/article/106573/shun_the_nonbeliever

    *All (and there are many) grammatical and punctuation errors were made by the original author!

    Dear Ms. Pang,

    I am a Cal alum who no longers lives in Berkeley, but I am on campus at times and always pick up a Daily Cal to read. Last Friday (Sept. 11) I found your column titled "Shun the nonbeliever" and enjoyed reading it. I have a few comments.

    1. You mentioned famous bad guy Joseph Stalin as an example of the atheists. Perhaps you could have mentioned that the equally bad (maybe worse) guy Adolf Hitler was religious (Christian), which maybe have explained his hatred for Jews.
    You see, I just added that line in as a funny point. I didn't feel the need to start ranting on every single bad religious person.

    2. In one paragraph, you wrote "We're secular humanists now" (whatever that means). Perhaps you could have used a dictionary to find out what that means. Both the words "secular" and "humanist" are in standard English dictionaries.
    Again, I this was supposed to be FUNNY. People aren't calling themselves atheists anymore because it has a bad name, so they adopted a better sounded title? Haha? You're horribly patronizing, by the way.

    3. In another paragraph you wrote that you had never heard of a single Atheist Club or Secular Humanist Club. Have you heard of the internet?
    Oh, BURN! You got me there! Seriously though- why is this guy so patronizing?

    A web search might have solved this problem for you, as there are such organizations. With this letter I will enclose a page copied from current issue (Sept/Oct 2009) of the magazine "The Humanist" - with a definision of Humanism at the bottom of the page, along with contact information for the magazine's publisher, the American Humanist Association.
    First of all, I believe I was simply mentioning that I had received a ton of fliers for religious clubs on CAMPUS, but I have yet to receive any information about the one atheist/secular humanist club at Cal. Comparing the popularity of religious to atheist clubs, geddit?

    Also enclosed will be several pages of information provided byt he local East Bay Atheists organization.
    NO! I don't want to go to the local East Bay Atheists organization! Stop! I was KIDDING!

    4. Your column ends with the question about what we are going to do with our time whne tohers are off at church. Some good answers to this question are given by Eric Maisel in his new book "The Atheist's Way" (New World Library, 2009). I purchased a paperback copy of this book in Berkeley recently and found it useful. Another suggested book is "The Portable Atheist, Essential Reading for the nonbeliever, selected and with introductions by Christopher Hitchens" (Da Capo Press, 2007), paperback, but a much alrger book than the Maisel book.
    Are. You. Effing. Kidding me? Was my last line not blatantly a joke about Facebook?

    Thanks for you column. I hope my comments are not too critical, because your writing was fun to read and I enjoyed it very much.

    Best wishes! Keep writing! Go Bears!
    God-less-ly yours,
    (Insert Pseudonym Here)

    Fine. I'll give you credit for your nice ending.

    But seriously. SERIOUSLY? Why don't some people learn how to gain a sense of humor?

    He also inserted a bunch of brochures and printouts about atheism... because he assumed that I am need of some guidance? Was the column not clear that I am very happy about my life and my beliefs?

    Fun note: he spent $1.05 to send this letter and included attachments. At least he cares!

Thursday, 17 September 2009

  • Today was frustrating. I am not a fan of today. Today sucked.

    Let's see: I woke up super early for my 9:30 class because I wanted to get breakfast. I've been looking forward to this breakfast since I saw the menu online Sunday night: French toast, bacon (Crossroads makes some killer bacon... and not just because it has enough grease on it to kill you), scrambled eggs, and tater tots. YUM. Just as I'm about to leave, I decide to make sure that I did all the homework for my writing class, only to find out that I forgot an assignment. Squid brains!

    Forget breakfast. I needed to whip out a mediocre one-pager (thank god it was an easy assignment) and then walk to class. During class, not only did my professor and classmates reject all of my ideas (my fault, not theirs. My ideas sucked.), but we didn't even turn in the one-pager. My tummy cried and yelled at me for being so responsible.

    Immediately afterward was my Daily Cal editing session, during which I learn that my editors hate my new column but are forced to publish it tomorrow because we don't have time to write another one. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but they definitely implied that they disliked my writing. Partially my fault again because they emailed me last night and asked for revisions, but I only changed the second half because I couldn't find a good angle. And I was so happy with this stupid column four days ago! Now I hate it and dread seeing it in the paper tomorrow. I'm sure I'll receive a lot of nasty comments on the Daily Cal website. People who comment there are meanie-poos.

    I have ten minutes before my next class, so I run to the GBC and grab an overpriced sandwich. I figured that I deserve a treat after my sad morning, and I really love their mozzarella fresca on foccaccia. Yum, right? Nope, it was disgusting today. Not enough tomato, almost no aioli, and semi-soggy bread. Depressing.

    I then accidentally zoned off during my political science lecture and was only awakened back into reality when the auditorium burst into laughter. Damn, I live for Professor Citrin's jokes, and I missed it! I can't catch a break! Cue the violins.

    So, I try to cheer myself up a little bit more by avoiding my stalker and treating myself to some fruit from the farmer's market stand. I grab a medium sized nectarine and two miniscule plums (literally 1.5 inches in diameter), get to register, and my total is $3! Ree-dick-u-lous.


    Actually, after all that crap, my day is significantly better. I'm honestly exaggerating how "bad" my day was. Anyway, at this point, it's only 2PM and I'm done with class (hooray for Thursdays!), so I spend the next four hours lying in my bed and watching 30 Rock and The Office reruns while eating fruit and cookies.

    Sidenote: Using your bed as a couch is NOT a good idea. I have crumbs all over the damn place and a pudding stain on my pillow case.

    Fine. Pointless selfish entry so I can vent. But actually, my day has been quite good for the past six hours. Eating, Internet, and more eating. (Fish curry at Crossroads today. Surprisingly good. Oh, and waffle cones today! Paired with chocolate frozen yogurt... Huzzah!)

    I think I'm mainly just crabby about the Daily Cal thing.
    Blech. I'm not fit to be a columnist and I feel like my editors are already regretting their decisions. This makes me sad. They keep telling me to write about things to other students can relate to, but let's face it- I've only been a college student for less than a month. I have no quirky anecdotes and definitely no advice. I kind of thought that being a columnist would be similar to being a blogger, but as it turns out, it's completely different. When you're a blogger, you can write whatever the hell you want. No word counts, no grammar rules, no need for a title or tagline. Shit, I just wrote 1000 words right here about my crappy day, and no one is going to go through it and tell me "Cut this out!" or "This doesn't make sense!" or "This doesn't work. NO! IT DOESN'T WORK!" (I'm really exaggerating. My editors are actually super-duper nice. Like, REALLY nice. Why am I so whiny?)

    Even worse, when you write a column, you have to have a POINT. I NEVER have a point. I just write whatever flows into my brain, which is usually something nonsensical and trivial to everyone else. But no, now I need a POINT, and an ANGLE, and ORIGINALITY, and RELATABILITY.

    And if that last sentence were in my column, it would have to be edited, because I can't use the Oxford comma.

    WHAT IF I LIKE USING THE OXFORD COMMA?
    It makes things clearer!
    What if I said, "I want cheese and ham and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."
    It's cheese and ham, and peanut butter and jelly. Not all separate. People need the Oxford comma. Seriously. 

Thursday, 10 September 2009

  • I need to learn how to:

    • Stop treating the dining commons as all-you-can-eat buffets. It's not good for my brain, and especially not good for my stomach. Two pieces of chocolate cake... as an appetizer... not a good idea.
    • Stop using the Oxford comma.
    • Write shorter sentences.
    • Think of 16 more column ideas with a multimedia accompaniment. 
    • Stop thinking that my meal points are "fake money."
    • Start taking shorter showers.
    • Properly shave my legs in a 2' x 2' shower stall with only the dim overhead lighting to guide my razor.
    • Stop watching Hulu videos while lying in my bed.
    • Stop feeling so bad for all the homeless people, because a lot of them are mean and crazy. I often walk by the same man who carries a sign that says "Money, please!" and I felt so sad for him, but suddenly, he added on to the bottom: "Money, please! I want a hooker because I'm tired of masturbating!"
    • Stop taking naps even though I had eight hours of sleep the night before.
    • Predict crazy, sporadic Berkeley weather.
    • Steal more things from the dining commons. I'm paying way too much money to only be stuffing my purse with apples.
    • Study.

Sunday, 06 September 2009

  • Things I've Learned During My First 2 Weeks As A College Freshman:

    • Frat parties are just as disgusting yet more uneventful than television portrays.
    • College professors are amazingly intelligent and hilarious. I wish that I could be their best friend.
    • Meeting new people / Being nice is all around exhausting.
    • Having a westward window has its perks and drawbacks: pros- beautiful bay view, cons- disgustingly sunny and hot from 1-6PM.
    • Dorm food, while at times surprisingly delicious and most of the time definitely not bad, is sickening. I ate a plate of bacon and two pieces of cheese zucchini frittata for lunch. And a bowl of Cap'n Crunch.
    • Just because there are seats at a football game doesn't mean that anyone actually uses them. Four hours on my feet. Torture.
    • I still don't understand football.
    • Football games automatically seem to drop everyone's IQ by at least ten points.
    • Class is fun! Studying is not. Neither is walking to class. Too. Many. Damn. Hills.
    My first lazy day in a long time. Slept in, heavy brunch, 30 Rock, nap, laundry, study. And maybe write another column for The Daily Californian. Ha! Don't you love how I just said that so casually? I'm the Friday columnist for The Daily Cal. Wheeee!

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

  • I wrote a somewhat long-ish entry last night about my first three days, which I now realize was never published. I'm blaming it on the mildly crappy internet in the dorms.

    I suppose I'll rewrite it at some point, but not now because writing about the same thing in a span of ten hours is boring.

    Anyway, I just finished my first college class.
    Like the proper nerd I am, I was kind of crazy excited to go and arrived more than forty minutes early. Considering my frequent tardiness, forty minutes early should tell you something about how much I just wanted the academics to start and these tiring social events to end.

    I was the first person there, so I just kind of sat there for a while. It was slightly depressing.

    The discussion ended an hour and fifteen minutes early (since lecture hasn't started, we obviously had nothing to discuss). It went well.

    My next class, which will be a proper lecture, won't start for another three hours. I'll probably only get there thirty-five minutes early, this time. I don't want to seem too geeky.


    I'm suddenly overcome with a fear that one of these birds flying around outside will come zooming through my open window. I live on the sixth (which is really the seventh, including ground floor), so it doesn't seem that unlikely.

    Oh no! I've also suddenly discovered that a long sliver of plastic is coming off of my laptop! I have no resources to fix it, so I've just applied a strip of Scotch tape. It's quite uneffective.

    Oh- too many trivial worries before noon.

Saturday, 22 August 2009

  • Since television has pretty much corrupted my entire mind, I have this habit where I try to find a song to correspond with the current point in my life (in the style of compiling The Original Soundtrack of My Life).

    For example:
    Early Senior Year- "Something to Talk About" by Badly Drawn Boy
    AP Season- "Lazy Jane" by Belle and Sebastian
    Whenever I have a good comeback- "The Bitch is Back" by Elton John

    At the moment, that song is "She's Leaving Home" by The Beatles.
    ... for obvious reasons.

    All of my things (with the exception of my beloved laptop) are packed up and ready-to-go first thing tomorrow morning.

    It's unbelievable how much one person needs just to live.
    My tally came up to:
    3 huge suitcases
    1 smaller suitcase
    2 large bags
    5 boxes

    I didn't think that I would have very much, because it seems like I wear basically the same clothes every other week, but as it turns out, I have way more clothes than I even knew about.

    Also, there are a ton of things that I didn't even consider:
    instant teas, coffees, hot chocolates
    (And then that brings in mugs, spoons, teapots)
    books- Which Harry Potter should I bring with me?!
    (I ultimately decided on Philosopher's Stone and Half-Blood Prince, only because I have extra paperbacks of both.)
    bathroom supplies: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, loofa, toothpaste, toothbrush, face cleanser, face toner, other face toner, face cream, other face cream, Clarisonic brush, contact lenses, contact lens solution, razor, shaving cream...
    (It especially doesn't help that I like to do my shopping at Costco, so everything I own is in bulk sizes.)


    It's unreal that this is my last night for the next three months that I'll be sleeping in my bed, in my room, in my house.

    I'm kind of ridiculously sleepy at the moment, but I promised myself that I would write this obligatory good-bye post so that I will always remember how I feel at this very moment.

    So to sum up,
    mainly sad and nervous
    a wee bit of excitement
    but mainly sad .
    I'm really not looking forward to unpacking, and I expect that in, oh, about twelve hours, I'll have realized that I forgot to pack some painfully important item.
    I'm also really not looking forward to the drive up.

    Oh, I am so tired right now. It's 6AM on the east coast, and I'm suffering from jet lag.
    I hate traveling.

    Okay- I need to end this with something sweet and sentimental, or at least just not in the form of my current incoherent thoughts.

    I'm so sleepy.
    Stoppit.

    I'm excited to leave. Although I'll miss my bedroom, my private bathroom, my puppies, and my family, it is time for me to leave. I feel ready.



    I also feel really sleepy.

Tuesday, 18 August 2009

  • At the moment, I am sitting in the lounge of a hotel in Times Square.

    Actually, it isn't a lounge. I thought it was, but I realized two minutes ago that I'm in fact sitting in the waiting area of a restaurant. Oh, well. I'm also sitting at the end of a row of chairs I'm sharing with a foreign family. There aren't enough chairs for the whole family, so their children are sitting in the seats across from us. I guess I should offer to exchange seats, but I'm through being polite!

    My feet hurt. All of the clothes I have smell. It's really hot. Really unbearably slit-your-wrists hot. I feel like a tub of lard because all I've eaten in the past week are high-fat restaurant foods. I don't even remember when I last ate a vegetable.

    New York is really smelly and overpopulated. The street vendors and homeless people scare me.

    Earlier today, some guy tried to sell me Obama condoms.
    "Your ultimate stimulus package for those hard times!"

    I miss Torrance. I miss my dogs.
    I wish that I didn't forget my copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma so that I could do something productive here. I also wish that I did more packing before I left. Thinking about the yet-to-be-filled cardboard boxes sitting in my bedroom makes me feel sick to my stomach.

    I want to go home and stay there for the next year. I don't want to leave. I want to be able to lay on my couch everyday, watch the contents of my DVR, and eat In-N-out.

    I've been gone for less than a week. I wonder how I'll cope for nine months.

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    • Name: Eden
    • Country: United States
    • Birthday: 8/2/1991
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  • Happiness can be found in food, television, The Beatles, and Harry Potter. I hate hypocrisy and people who hate hypocrisy.

EDEN for MARRIAGE EQUALITY!





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