The Search: For Some Sanity

It’s a Saturday night, and I find myself in one of those ridiculously unjustifiable contemplative moods.

Wow, that was a lot to say in one sentence.  ‘Ridiculously unjustifiable contemplative moods’.

I suppose if I wanted to allude that to my own life, it’s perfectly fine.  My life seems to be a discombobulation of things, but only because I put myself in that position.   Come to think of it, what am I even writing about here?

Such is the nature of Web 2.0 I suppose, where we can put our thoughts online.  I’m doing it right now, and with no particular aim, except to maybe share my thoughts on a particular subject — probably that of the female gender.  Needless to say, I am living through deja vu, and once again frustrated at the little hole I have once again dug myself.

This is getting pretty already.  I can feel it.

…Yeah.   Read the title.

A Challenge to Santa Clara Students

For the past couple of days, the numbers 243 and 17 have resonated through my head, like the screams of those yelling “Wake Up Swig!” outside my window.

No, these numbers don’t represent the amount of money I owe my friends for the Nintendo Wii. Nor do they represent textbook costs or course numbers here at Santa Clara.

These my friends, are the number of students who have been cited for underage alcohol usage and students sent to the hospital since the end of the fall quarter at Santa Clara.  As we await the beginning of the winter quarter, we can only assume that this number will grow, despite new university sanctions.

As Santa Clara University students, we are well aware that this school is like any other campus, riddled with the rigors of a college education in addition to a taste for the likes of alcoholic beverages. In fact, we set aside not only the traditional times of Fridays, Saturdays but Wednesday evenings as well to quench our irresistible thirst for fermented fruit, yeast, hops and barley with the occasional burst of punch thrown in for good measure. We enjoy a great night out at one of the houses, or even in the comforts of our own residence hall. Everyone knows someone who has gotten wasted at some time during their college career. But I ask, why? And to what extent?

Here at Santa Clara University, we are a thriving undergraduate body of 4,600 plus students. We pride ourselves on the Jesuit tradition of conscience, compassion and competence. We unify over our own RLCs, partaking in weekly events and unifying over a common cause — us. We retain over 90 percent of our freshmen each year, and graduate over 80 percent through four years. We have great professor accessibility as well as class sizes, something that cannot be rivaled by the nearby universities. Students go on to be leaders of the modern world, whether they graduate from the school of Arts and Sciences, Engineering or Leavey School of Business. Faith is a giant part of campus life, both at the MissioN Church, as well as campus student religious groups. In fact, as part of the Jesuit tradition, students are required to take 3 quarters of a religious courses. We also have the Multicultural Center (MCC), located in the Shapell Lounge, where those of color and minority ethnic backgrounds can flock to associate with individuals of their race. Likewise, we also have the Santa Clara Community Action Program (SCCAP), which exists so people can help other less fortunate individuals.  The list goes on and on…

It is for these reasons, why I chose this university over the likes of UC Irvine, my other choice.

We have great athletics too — our soccer teams are consistently ranked in the top-20 in the nation. Our women’s volleyball team and men’s water polo team too, are ranked highly and our school has sent many individuals onto the olympics as well as professional sports, none greater than 2-time MVP Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns, who came and spoke at convocation. Ruff Riders, our school’s sports booster team, run by students and supported by Associated Students, boasts over 1,500 members who proudly cheer on the Broncos, whether it be against our crosstown rivals in San Jose State, our or fellow West Coast Conference rivals the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

So why, despite all these great attributes that this university boasts, why must we sit down and crack open a bottle of alcohol? The characteristics of this university point to much bigger things — even alcohol could be put to shame with the amount of work and service that Santa Clarans do each year, whether it be as big volunteering as an Orientation Leader during the summer or just sorting files in the Drahman Center.

So as we enter the new year, the year 2007 — I challenge all undergraduate Santa Clarans to take a stand that next Wednesday, Friday or Saturday night. I challenge undergraduate Santa Clarans to put down their bottles of Heineken, cans of Bud Light and shots of Vodka, and to rejoice in what Santa Clara truly is — a campus that reflects the hard work, academic excellence and jesuit tradition that was founded over 150 years ago.

First Quarter Photos: A Look Back

If you look to your right on the navigation bar, you should see that.  I think you would definitely enjoy it.

Santa Clara Speech Tournament

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on December 10th, 2oo6. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here.]

I don’t think one can truly appreciate the science of a speech tournament until they’ve actually taken part in it.

By taken part, I don’t mean participate in competition, I mean tabbing, being a runner among other things. There are so many things to do, so little time to do it, and tons of variables to depend on for the times to happen.

Such is the science of the Santa Clara University Speech Tournament. Any speech person who has attended, especially the December edition, can tell you that it runs atrociously late, which essentially means that this tournament can still be going at midnight or later. I myself, like others, have complained for years how slow the tournament goes — the surplus of hours between rounds, doing homework, taking random photos, walking around campus and hopelessly waiting for posts to go up. And like others, I myself absolutely hated this tournament because it was a weekend that I could otherwise spend doing homework before a hellaciously evil week of school.

After this weekend, I think the hatred is gone. I have forgiven the evil demons of the Santa Clara Speech Tournament. And now I understand why it runs so late — we never have enough people to do enough things at a given amount of time. We’re always short on people running back and forth from the tab room (where people tabulate scores and whatever — even you could’ve guessed that) to the judging room. I myself have made at least 10 – 15 of these trips over the last two days (and that being a raw estimate), and how have knees that are hurting, and a cell phone that is lost. Mind you its not any more fun that it’s raining too and you have a jacket that lacks a hood and you don’t have an umbrella. Yes, campus is small, but running back and forth is so tiring. But hey, at least giving directions is easy (and so is explaining events).

In other events, I am finally done with my first quarter of college. Finals ended on Friday. I think I did okay, although I think I’ll also be entertaining a few C+’s for this quarter. Ah well.

Seasons greetings!

What Black Friday Doesn’t Teach You

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on November 24th, 2oo6. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here.]

I find it amazing that two days out of the year, people in America are willing to get up before the crack of dawn, stand in forty degree weather with others, and fight over consumer electronics, clothing, and other miscellaneous accessories, all at a tremendous discount, then spend another thirty minutes to two hours standing in line. Like the principles of economics state, if you give people an incentive to do something, they will most likely jump at it.

So like a huge fraction of the people in America today, I got out of bed at 4 am this morning on three hours sleep and decided to trudge over with my mother, to the Circuit City off of highway 85 at the Costco at Almaden Expressway. The line was long, and curved around the building and down towards the Men’s Wearhouse. It was absolutely maddening inside, with lines curving around aisles once, twice and in some cases, three times. I think I spent what felt like an eternity in there, which was really more like an hour and a half. But yeah, if I’m the manager, I think I’m sitting in my black leather chair this afternoon and counting all the dollars I received.

In the greater scheme of things though, in such a materialistic world, it’s kind of funny how we count our blessings one day, and then the very next, we’re counting how much we’ve bought. We judge people by the amount they have in their pockets sometimes, and not in their hearts. I’m all for a DVD player for $20, but sometimes, I just wish I could drop it all and leave it all behind and just go sit in the creek and enjoy what’s already there. We seem to always talk about living a simple life with the so-called simple pleasures, but how many of us really do it?

I was thinking this at a Safeway later, when I saw this elderly man purchasing a bouquet of flowers, perhaps for a wife, sibling or friend. He glanced over at me while as I was putting what my mom and I had bought on the counter, and as we changed to a different cash register, it made some more sense, that in this world, we could probably lose everything we’ve ever had, and all our material possessions

But in the end, we still have each other.

Maybe this ‘holiday’ is good for something after all.

Home for Thanksgiving

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on November 18th, 2oo6. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here.]

Wow, it really feels relaxing to be home. There aren’t any cars whizzing by every 5 seconds, drunk people yelling “Wake up Swig!” or people running around the halls at 3 in the morning (although earplugs blot most of it out).

It’s so great, I slept 10 hours last night. I haven’t done that in awhile.

On another random and unrelated note, my roommate and I go through spastic song addictions, where we play these music videos of these songs from YouTube like 3 times a day. I went from George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” to Spandou Ballet’s “Truth”. I really wonder what comes up next…

And speaking of that UCLA incident that everyone seems to be talking about, I found it kind of chilling, how the police tasered him so many times, and the comments he was making back. SCU doesn’t really have a library, so I wouldn’t expect that to happen here, although if some kind of protest happened around the Benson Center, that would be really interesting…

Bouts of Nostalgia

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on November 12th, 2o06. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here.]

I guess I knew the day this entry would come, the day I feel nostalgic. The post that Karen has been has been probably waiting for since the day I left for Santa Clara.

Everyone else is more than a stone’s throw away from Almaden Valley, and even that, more than a plane ride away too with a good car ride in between. I know I have the chance to go home every weekend if I wanted, and hang out with old high school friends. But I didn’t – so I could live at college for awhile and reflect what has gone on in my life for awhile. This feels like a high school post already, but I think it’ll go somewhere else…

I guess facebook is a measure of what high school was like. Every so often, I’ll go back and glance at the old photos of mine, the old photos of my current high school friends and ask, how are they doing now? I wonder what goes on in the hallways of Leland High these days. I wonder what has become of speech and debate, the homecoming rally, the student body, among other things such as my house, my cats sometimes, even. Sure, I talk to these people online, but the online presence is never as great as truly being there. Strangely enough to say, my roommate doesn’t even talk about home as much as I do, nor has he ever mentioned that he misses high school — and he lives a good 6 hour flight out of San Jose.

College teaches you a couple things in your first couple months — it’s that the people who are your true friends in high school, they stay around. Even a facebook poke means something, as trivial as those may seem. I suppose even running the longest of poke wars, like the one with Scott, even means something after these many months. That he still bothers to click the “poke back” button after a long day of whatever class he just took. The occasional facebook wall post from an individual long seemingly lost at an institution of higher learning far far away means more than anything. If facebook and my email account mean anything, then of the many Leland High friends in the class of 2006 just never did care. I think I’m fine with that, and even looking at the wall-to-wall posts of other Lelanders between each other in college (Yes, I do this), I kind of miss the camaraderie heading into the last few days of high school. It really makes me wonder, when people asked how I was, or commented on who I was, did they really care? Or was I just another figure in someone’s life that happened to cross paths with them, and then go on because I was that idiosyncratic individual who cracked his fingers or screamed because he beat Mr. Miller in the stock game? Reading about how people got stoned in the last weekend is just a way to gauge how they are spending their college lives, as opposed to me. And I really wonder, what has become of many people?

I was really, really disappointed this last Friday when USC beat SCU in soccer, 1-0. I was there the whole way, and watched the women lie on the ground as the horn sounded, reflecting on the season that landed them at No. 3 in the nation. I watched that ball go into the goal, and I watched that missed penalty kick clang off the top crossbar in the 50-somethingith minute. I watched as the USC goalie blocked an SCU shot point blank, denying SCU one of the four potential goals it should have gotten. I was shocked and complacent for awhile, and then it hit me that I really shouldn’t care all that much. That my life until now has probably been a soccer game like that too. Tons of penalty kicks hitting off crossbars, tons of shots being blocked at point blank range, and tons of random shots going inside when people least expect it. I suppose life is just that — a soccer game where sometimes you get those random shots, and sometimes you just miss completely or hit the top crossbar.

Needless to say, I have grown and changed in my short 2-3 months here in college. I am in the process of getting killed in a couple classes. I try my hardest, and study, and still manage a decent C. I refuse to be average, but the battle goes on. I have watched my roommate stumble in on Halloween night, drunk like none other and barf into the trashcan. I have seen people in general get drunk, and just go absolutely crazy. But despite the losses, I have gains as well, doing things that I have never done before, such as join a committee on Associated Students and become Secretary of my school’s Chinese Students Association. And despite that, I have also seen that college produces great friends, as much as it is. Great friends who are sophomores, juniors and seniors.

I suppose at the end of all this, life and nostalgia are all something quite trivial. This entry is meant to be reflective, despite the fact that I am 20 minutes from home, but in the greater scheme of things, these are just thoughts compiled at the end of a long, laborious week. A week full of ups, downs and frustrations of the college life. It is fun here, don’t get me wrong, but I think I just need some time at home, or just to go back to old times again, as much as I complained how bad and boring those were.

I guess that’s what they mean when they say “home is where the heart is”, huh?

The Santa Clara University Drinking Experience

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on November 5th, 2006. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here. ]

So I think it was kind of obvious when I applied to this school that it was a drinking school. Of course, it’s a given that all schools are drinking schools to some degree, but my, we sure know how to party on this campus. Of all things, Wednesday nights (as well as Friday and Saturday nights) are party nights, we have an “Official SCU Beer Pong League” on facebook and well, it finally happened: Alcohol appeared on the front page of our campus newspaper and letters were sent home to parents. Apparently, 12 students so far have been sent to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and 246 have been cited for use of alcohol. That’s 5.5% of my school for you right there (my school has 4,400 people in it for undergraduates). For those of you don’t know who Beer Pong is by the way, it’s where you arrange cups in a triangular form on both sides of a table, a ping pong table really, and play ping pong and it involves drinking. Yeah, that was a really bad description, but having never played it, or wanting to play it, I wouldn’t know.

As the title indicates, Halloween was a sort of strange experience for me. Did I dress up? Nope. Go house to house and ask for candy? Nope. What did happen you ask?

Well, to keep it simple: My roommate got drunk. Very, very drunk.

I was sitting at my computer on Tuesday night, and minding my own business after coming back from walking around, when I got a call from a friend, saying that my roommate Andrew, was “wasted”. That is never a good sign, whichever way you take it. In a fit of distress, I sprint out of my room, down the stairs and straight to Walsh Hall in under 5 minutes. Kind of like a 100 meter dash. But anyhow, I reach him, and he has part of his costume on his head, and it doesn’t look pretty at all. Apparently, he had too many Vodka shots and some other drink to drink at the party he went to.

Long night, here we come.

So me and a friend carry him back up to his room, and the sight is not pretty here at all. He starts throwing up into our blue recycle receptacle, and it goes on for a good 10 to 15 minutes. A couple of my friends and I help him and it’s quite painful to watch, really. Not only might he have a hangover the next day, but man, all that alcohol coming back up is just… gross.

The night for him finally ends about 2 water bottles and 45 minutes later when he finally falls asleep. I’m quite dazed and in a shock myself.

So what is the moral of the story here? Simple, you don’t drink too much, because you end up throwing up a lot and carrying a potential hangover. Sure, you know that, but you don’t really know what it’s like until you have to get a roommate who’s throwing up all over the place at midnight. And besides, why would you drink, anyway?

Jungle Juice (a sip of what I had), tastes like Robitussin (the cough syrup)…

Meanwhile, I have 2 midterms coming up this next week, two hours spaced apart. Wish me luck! And despite all this, I still like this school; the academics are great (besides maybe, my calculus teacher… Kel > Friedenbach).

Until next time, Go Broncos!

No football, but plenty of fútbol

[This post originally appeared on my xanga on October 13th, 2006. It is here for reflection reasons. To view the original entry, click here.]

So while buying scantrons might be disappointing (They are something like 48 cents each… but thank goodness I didn’t need one for my math midterm today…), there is nothing like watching a good game of soccer under the lights here at Buck Shaw Stadium on a Friday.

That’s right, while the majority of the nation gets ready for an action packed Saturday of beer, body paint and bombs (touchdown passes), we here at good ol’ Santa Clara lace on the soccer cleats, pick up some popcorn and pay two dollar bills for 90 minutes of fútbol (soccer, for those of you who never took any spanish), involving kicking, tackling and sometimes, scoring. I say sometimes because there seem to be so many people on the field (12 I think?) at one time, so you really have to try hard to get ball through. The women (ranked third in the nation here) seem to do it better than the men (ranked fifteenth?). After all, it was the women who beat San Jose State 6-0 on a wet, rainy and cold night last week, while the men, under perfect conditions, cool skies and a decent crowd, tied a St. Mary’s team, 0-0.

I’d have to say though, the highlight of this game was not the two shots that hit off the crossbars (exciting, even for a soccer newbie like me), but rather the guy who sat next to me and ripped apart and heckled the goalie for the second half, shouting things like “The school you go to isn’t even one!!” (It is much easier to get into St. Mary’s than SCU, truth not bias) and whatever else. That was really, really funny.

So no football here at Santa Clara (the team was actually disbanded in 1993 due to financial reasons), but plenty of fútbol. And that’s the way we like it. After all, Brandi Chastain graduated from here…

Can’t wait for college basketball season to begin.

In a sentence…

I love it here at SCU.

I know it’s been less than a month, and the quarter is barely half over, but like the theme of welcome weekend, “Welcome Home”, I feel like I am at home here.  The people here are friendly, goal-oriented and outgoing and there is this sense of community like everyone belongs, no matter where they are from.   My roommate is probably the best I could’ve asked for. From Hawaii, he is laid-back, relaxed, and seems to know how to live life.

My next door neighbors, whom yes, are girls, are from Southern California and Northern, respectively.  They love their disney movies like none other and when the sun is up and day is bright, can be heard singing disney tunes.  That will only get more enjoyable as the year moves on.

To the other side of my room is Brian, who is from Denver, Colorado.  He’s a Republican, but no one really seems to care.  He’s Conservative, and atheist, a rare mix of someone who supports the right-wing.  He could be from Hawaii, but you never know.  He carries that relaxed tone as well.  Across from his room are Shanthi and Tiffany, from Illinois and Boston, respectively.  Shanthi is the runner on SCU’s Cross Country team, Tiffany is the blossoming genius, hoping to one day go into a scientific field.  Both are reserved individuals.  You’d they were from Hawaii too, until they start talking.  And then it’s evident.

Across the hall is Athena, our Community Facilitator (CF).  She’s a senior, majoring in about a billion majors and minors.  She knows the ropes of SCU, and that makes my life a whole lot easier.  Across to the right from her room is Shane.  Kudos to him for letting me use his water filter.  I really appreciate that.

Down three floors is Conor.  Conor is definitely not from Hawaii.  He uses Chicago as every excuse, and backs it up with philisophical knowledge.  You’d think he would’ve done LD in high school, but there was no debate team at his high school.  Shame, shame…  Across campus are Karen and Heather, who actually did speech in high school; Policy for Karen and DI for Heather.  They have been wonderful people as well.

For most of you, you’ve heard the story before.  I’ve been a literal native to the Santa Clara campus ever since my elementary school days, when those Science Adventure Camps were held here.  I vaguely remember walking past Swig Hall (the hall I currently live in) on concrete, before the lawn was put in, and walking through the residence halls from one place to another.   Years later, I would come to SCU for speech and math tournaments, walking through the halls to rounds in Kenna, where I now have business-oriented classes, or doing seemingly difficult math problems in O’Connor Hall, where I now have my math class.  The campus should be old, boring and lacking it’s luster by now, but is far from doing that.  In fact, my hall gets more interesting each and everyday.

I guess why I’m writing this entry is that I finally found a niche of sorts.  After going to the same district for thirteen years along the same street, I kept on finding myself having to look back to the past to justify my actions in the current sphere.  I kept having to hear the same people who thought I was weird, did things in idiosyncratic ways, and for awhile, until my last few days, I never really felt that I belonged.  I found people who I knew valued me as much as I valued them, but it didn’t seem to surface until those last few days of high school.

So I suppose in a sentence…

Thanks everyone.