mood: relatively good, slightly incredulous
music: Jerk It – Thunderheist

On May 8th, I took Mark to go see Wicked in San Francisco as part of his birthday present — from last year, LOL. Hey, better late than never, right? But first, we went to go eat at the CPK by MoMA. (Can you tell I like acronyms?) It was the first CPK I’d had in over a month, so that was refreshing and yummy. Definitely not the same as eating it back home, though! But I won’t complain; it still tasted like heaven after weeks of ramen.

Afterward, we rode the BART to Orpheum Theater, which was nice in that very historic theater kind of way. The bathrooms sucked, though. But I obviously didn’t pay $200 for bathrooms, so that was fine. Mark was crazily excited, though I have to admit that I was, too. He was like enraptured throughout the entire show; it was adorable to watch. And what a show it was! We got an understudy, but she was really good anyway. It was definitely worth it. On a side note, I freaking love set changes. I think they’re one of the most entertaining things in the world to watch, hahaha. And the sets were so amazing! Also, OMFG, I have never seen so much green in one room in my life.

It was our last fun thing before Dead Week settled in, so we both really enjoyed it. Dead Week was…well, more stressful than busy, I suppose. I made what felt like a gazillion study guides, wrote what felt like thousands of drafts of the same essay over and over again, and caught up on a ton of reading. I did get to make a cool lexicon for World of Warcraft, though, that I’m quite proud of, heh. Oh, I also bought a ridiculous amount of food and other miscellaneous items, trying desperately to use up my meal points.

Mark left a week before me, but his roommate went home for Dead Week so I got to stay over at his place for a few days, which was really nice. When his parents arrived, I went to dinner with them, and there were some awkward moments, but that’s hardly unexpected. After they dropped us off to go back to their hotel, we went back to his room, and while he packed, I worked on my Art History study guide. In the end, he was so behind (procrastinator! -_-) that I had to help him so that he would actually be able to sleep in time to wake up at 9 the next morning. We ended up staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning, and I was a little exasperated, but he had just finished a gazillion assignments and pulled an all-nighter the previous day (all his finals/finals assignments were on/due on the same day), so I gave him a little slack.

The next morning, we said goodbye and then I went back to my place to study. Unexpectedly, he called me later in the afternoon and asked me to feed his parents with my meal points, and I was happy to see him again. We chilled for a bit with Katie, who had gone with him to the storage place. When we finally said goodbye, it was for a week, which seemed so long after seeing each other frequently in the past four months, and yet seemed so short compared to the time we’d spent apart during Fall Semester. I’m hardly one to go crazy after not seeing someone for a week, so I was fine, although it would’ve been nice to have somebody to comfort me when I was stressed like whoa, seeing as I kind of lacked friends in Berkeley. Oh well, I did fine. My finals all went well, and I got good marks. A- in English, A in Linguistics, B+ in LGBT, P in Art History, and P in Taiwanese. Not bad for my first semester at a school in which I was afraid I would perform second-rate. I’m proud because I proved that I do belong there — at least academically — no matter what anyone says about my intelligence, or lack thereof. Even though part of me is really mad that I didn’t get all A’s (4.0 GPA or not), the more sane part of me realizes that that’s silly. I performed above my expectations, even though those were under my standards, if that makes any sense.

My mom drove up on the 19th, and I took her to dinner at my favorite sushi place. She wholeheartedly approved of the food, which made me happy, haha. She is a Japanese food veteran, after all. I hung out with her for a while, and then I went back to my place. I didn’t really have much packing to do, since I had already been packing throughout the week, so I mostly just chilled. It was a nice last night; felt a little weird leaving, though. I hadn’t lived the whole year there, so I wasn’t like attached to the place or anything, but I had definitely become used to it. I wasn’t sad leaving — hell, I was ecstatic to be going home — but I’m always a little bothered when the routine I’ve settled into is disrupted, so I did try to memorize the room and everything that had happened in it.

The next morning, I met up with my mom and we struggled to parallel park for the longest time before giving up, LOL. Piled the stuff I was taking to storage into the car and then piled Katie and Linda’s stuff into the car as well. Katie took us to the storage place, where I marveled at the ingenuity of the tiny spaces that were perfect for college students’ stuff. Managed to fit all of our stuff into the place and then went back to school, where we dropped Katie off and then piled the car up with all the stuff I was going to take home. Somehow, that filled up the car, even though half of my stuff was in storage, and we had driven up with Mark and some of his stuff when I first moved in. I hate that stuff just randomly expands like that! Anyway, I took my mom to the Crepes shop that I really like, and she was impressed by how filling they were, haha. Then, we headed home!

Returning home was one of the greatest feelings I have ever felt in my entire life.

There is no place — no place — like home.

I don’t need fancy cars, I don’t need name-brand clothes, I don’t need flowers or chocolate, I don’t need tons of money, I don’t need expensive furniture or bedsheets — but I need my own space, more than anything. And that’s something I don’t think I’m going to get for a very, very long time. Why, college, why?

mood: relaxed
music: Fire Burning – Sean Kingston

Oh yeah, so now that the school year is over, I can totally just dish out all the shit about my roommates without feeling paranoid about them finding my blog and then getting pissed off at me or something. Yay!

So… I was put in a triple, with Wanni and Flora. After some investigation before I moved in, I found out that Wanni had a large number of Facebook friends and seemed pretty nice; and Flora was an exchange student from Shanghai, China. The first day I was at school (two days before school started), I got the room to myself. The next day, Wanni arrived, and at about eleven at night, Mark walked me back to my room, planning to meet her. We walked in, and the room was all dark, and she was in bed, LOL. Flustered, I introduced them to each other and then quickly said goodbye to Mark. I turned on my lamp and went on my laptop as usual, and less than half an hour later, she asked me to turn off the lamp — so I did. And then after tossing and turning like crazy for another half hour, she asked me if I usually went to sleep pretty late. I said yes, my heart sinking. Then, she asked if I could go outside to the study lounge if I planned to stay up after midnight. She said that she knew it was my room, too, so that it wasn’t quite fair, but she had 8 AM classes and couldn’t sleep with light and sound in the room.

Frowning, I packed my stuff and went out to the lounge. IMed all my friends, upset about it, and then got in a big argument with Mark about not standing up to her. We continued arguing about it for months afterward, before he finally dropped the topic when he realized that I was not going to talk to her about it. How awkward is it to come in in the middle of a semester and interrupt someone’s way of life? I didn’t want to be that new girl who caused drama in a previously peaceful room and fucked everything up. I’m good at dealing with shit, ignoring shit. And so I did, even though I was pretty fucking miserable getting kicked out of my room all the time. The roommate problem definitely contributed to me going over to Mark’s place all the time. I’m ordinarily much more independent than that, but since I had no friends and he and his roommate stayed up late all the time, chilling there with all my stuff was way better than being forced to go to the lonely lounge after midnight.

This was the status quo for a long time, until one week I decided to just disrupt the routine and see what would happen. This was propelled by the fact that Flora was becoming more and more annoyed with Wanni coming back to the room at 11:30ish and going to sleep, forcing us to either vacate the room or go to sleep as well. So one day, Wanni came back at 11, and Flora and I went to the bathroom, where she asked me if I was going to sleep. I said no. So then we didn’t sleep. We turned all the lights off, typed super quietly, and even shifted our laptops so that the light from our screens wouldn’t hit her directly. Wanni tossed and turned and tossed and turned until she finally stomped out of the room and went to the bathroom for like two seconds before coming back and giving us a speech about how we had to go out to the study lounge if we wanted to stay up because she just couldn’t sleep with us in the room. She acknowledged that we were trying our best to be considerate, but it just wasn’t cutting it. Again, she said that she knew it was our room and that it wasn’t fair, but when she’s in her room, she wants to sleep and she couldn’t do that with us there. I waited for Flora to say something, but she didn’t say a single word, so all that I could say was “Okay” before I packed to go outside as usual. Flora went outside pretty quickly and then came right back, climbing onto her bed with her laptop. Confused, I went outside with all my stuff and found the lounge completely full. So I just sat in the hallway outside of our room. Fun stuff.

The next morning, as Wanni and I were getting ready for class (Flora had already left earlier), she thanked me for going outside the previous night. I was pleasantly surprised by this, until she proceeded to complain about Flora and how she had childishly stayed in the room typing really loudly on purpose until like ten minutes before I came back from the lounge (approximately 2 AM). For the next few days, she would disparage Flora randomly, and Flora complained more and more about Wanni coming back and going to sleep so early. Really, fun stuff, eh?

Neither of them were really my kind of people, but at least Flora made a compatible roommate. We spent many afternoons just sitting at our desks on our computers, watching anime/reading manga, talking to people online, eating, and occasionally complaining to each other about our tests and essays. When I left to come home, she gave me a hug and said that we had to stay in touch. I thought that was really nice, especially since it’s obviously not expected for her to stay in contact with me since she’s going back to China this summer. Wanni, on the other hand, didn’t even say goodbye, even though she knew I was leaving the morning after she left to stay at Jack’s place. So, whatever. At any rate, I’m just glad that the year is over. I do realize that Wanni’s sleep habits were incompatible with mine because they just stuck me anywhere there was room, since I was a spring admit coming in in the middle of the year. Regardless, I hope that next year’s dorming experience will be much more pleasant…

The last time I fought for something that I wanted, I had my heart broken. Forgive me if I’m not comfortable putting my all into another fight.