I chose a band I knew it’d be hard to do this for, to make things more interesting

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Re-post as “my life according to (band name)”

Pick your Artist:
matchbook romance

Are you a male or female:
tiger lily

Describe yourself:
say it like you mean it

How do you feel:
she’ll never understand

Describe where you currently live:
hollywood and vine

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
i wish you were here

Your favorite form of transportation:
you can run, but you can’t hide

Your best friend is:
if all else fails

You and your best friends are:
lovers and liars

What’s the weather like?
what a sight

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
fiction

What is life to you:
your stories, my alibis

Your current relationship:
stay tonight

Your fear:
promise

What is the best advice you have to give:
playing for keeps

Thought for the Day:
farewell to friends

How I would like to die:
the greatest fall of all time

My soul’s present condition:
shadows like statues

My motto:
surrender

First blog completely typed with a Dvorak keyboard! The first time I dabbled in this nerdy hobby was probably back in my freshman or sophomore year of high school, but after a few weeks of trying to pick up the new (old) way of typing, it got too tiring so I gave up. Hopefully this summer, my efforts will be more fruitful. I think I also attempted it a second time last year, but that was also a failed attempt.

So I finally got somewhere with the redesign of my hearts, Above is a scan of the sketches I made before deciding which style to follow through with. I thought it’d be kind of fun to show a bit of my process. (The equation of hyperbolic cosine was a note I made to myself during math, haha.)

So I made these vectors really quickly this morning based on the sketches in the scan. They’re messy, but I’d still like a bit of feedback before I clean it up any further.

Here’s the new ace, too. It’s pretty much finalized I think I still like the old ace better, but I agree that the style of this one fits better with the rest of the deck.

After finishing this suit, I’ve just got the joker and back to design before I’m totally done! I’m really excited for the day I hold my deck in my hands… whenever that might be.

Ohhhhh my god typing in Dvorak for so long is making me so tired! By the time I finish typing out one sentence of my thoughts, I’ve already forgotten what else I wanted to say. BUT I WILL PERSEVERE! At least it makes me really think about what I’m saying. Kind of.

PS. I just took another look at the Jack, Queen, and King, and I feel like the Jack doesn’t match that well with the other two. I’ll probably fix the set by making the Jack’s thinner and the Q and K’s thicker. Yeah, I lazily typed Q and K because it’s taking too long to type.

I have ridiculously horrible short term memory.

Saturday morning, I went to the first session of summer CHAMPs. We’re only going to have three sites this summer, and unfortunately I’m going to miss the second one due to yearbook’s editor retreat. Since there wasn’t any transportation available this weekend, and Stanley had shown interest in coming to CHAMPs with me previously, I asked him to drive me and hang out with the kids with me. We picked up Lucy, an alum, and headed to downtown at around 9. We got a little lost on the way but still got there around 9:30. Neel arrived shortly after, and the four of us ended up being the only mentors there. Good thing there were very few kids there as well, because otherwise it would’ve been way too difficult to organize.

The day before, I had asked Stanley to get about 15 feet of white butcher paper for me from his RA friend, so when we got to CHAMPs, I spread it across three or four tables and wrote a big “WE LOVE CHAMPs” on it. I opened the crafts cabinet and got out all sorts of random things - feathers, paint, sponges and stamps, sprinkles, yarn, etc., and just let the kids have at it. It ended up being a relatively successful impromptu event. There weren’t that many of my K-2 kids, so I still miss them, but it was great being around some of the other kids again. I think our biggest problem at CHAMPs is not being able to discipline the kids, but I’m not sure how to take care of that, either. What’s a legit means of threatening them in a way that they’ll really listen? I’m not still naive enough to think that honesty and truth, by example, will work itself out. What steps can we take to grind these lessons into the kids’ minds?

After CHAMPs, we headed back to our apartment to pack for a weekend Arcadia adventure. After getting to Stanley’s house, Layla and I just bummed around and read - I finally started reading The Giver, which I finished before the end of the day. After getting settled, Stanley and I left Layla at home reading and went to the mall to get my ears pierced. The hot weather (according to Layla) made us both easily irritable, and a short irrational quip led to a wasted afternoon of me not getting my ears pierced. We headed back (in silence) and I finished The Giver (More on that later) and eventually made up. We accompanied the rest of the family to Stanley’s aunt’s house for a BBQ. As a true Cantonese household, the mah jong table was set up and being played on when we arrived. After the adults dispersed to deal with food, Layla, Stanley, Justin, and I took over the table for a couple rounds. I won both rounds by zi mo (自模) which was TOTAL LUCK. It reminded me of old times at Guilin with Alex and Danny and Fifield…that was a fun trip. At the BBQ, they had one of the street-vendor-style egg-cake (雞蛋糕) waffle things, and they were awesome. To complete my vision of Taiwan, I had a Hey Song (黑松) sarsaparilla soda, too.

While waiting for the adults to finish socializing, Stanley, Justin, Layla, and I sat around and watched Harry Potter on cable, haha. We got back to Stanley’s house at around midnight and pretty much just crashed after the long day.

Sunday morning, I got up at 9:30 to take a shower. After Stanley got up and we had breakfast, we dropped Layla off at Matt’s house (WHERE I SAW THREE PEACOCKS!!!! SITTING ON HIS FRONT YARD!!!!). Then Stanley surprised me by bringing me to Huntington Library! I had never been there, and I’ll admit that I thought it was a book-library when I first heard of. Actually, it’s a huge estate with various art galleries and open gardens. We went through a gallery of British art and design, then followed up with American paintings and work from the Arts and Crafts movement. I was a bit tired by the time we saw the Greene & Greene collection, but it was super cool to see work that I learned to be the response to industrial improvements in mass production. I was reminded of how much I used to like researching art and art history… DESMA10 and ARCH&UD10B were awesome and I wish I had time to take more classes in those subject areas. I wrote down a few artists’ names and pieces for future research (Edward William Godwin - Anglo-Japanese style, Samuel Gragg - side chair, Allan Adler, Edward Ruscha, Sam Francis) but I don’t know when I’ll get around to that.

The Huntington was awesome, it also had a cool botanical garden (The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science) with little labs for kids to explore with. Clearly, I took advantage of them and played with microscopes and felt like a freshman in high school again. It reminded me of the indoor rainforest at the Academy of Sciences in SF.

After getting scorched in the sun while walking through the Japanese (bonsai!) and Australian gardens, we headed over to the mall for a second attempt at getting my ears pierced. After having a late lunch of McD’s (because we are high class), we went to Icing and…success! I now have two holes in each ear, and I really like it. It took forever for the lady to mark my ears perfectly symmetrically, but it paid off to wait, and now I am super satisfied. It looks really good, if I may say so myself, and I can’t wait until it’s all healed up so I don’t have to be afraid of hurting myself, haha.

But now, awesome weekend is over and it’s time to get back to schoolwork and concentrating and all those lesser-fun things. Alas, the life of a college student in the summer. I’m glad UCLA is nearer to the ocean and hence not 100+ degrees every day…

1. Get higher than a B+ average in my three classes
2. Finish my hearts & joker
3. Design a T-shirt
4. Lose like, five pounds or something or at least get in shape…
5. Redesign my index page and remember all the HTML and php I forgot
6. Save money? Not spend more than 50$/day
7. Finish my sketchbook from last summer
8. Ready my resume for the job applying process
9. Try ten new things!!!!!
10. Design/draw something seriously
11. Finish reading Layla’s book Momoiro no Kirin

Tuesday afternoon, I texted Stanley to ask if he’d be willing to take me to the mall after class to get my ears pierced. He said sure, so since I finished class earlier, I headed back to the apartment to chill for a few hours before we’d head out. I got distracted by Sims 3 for about an hour, and then I got a call from Daniel. I thought to myself, “Hmm, why would Daniel be calling me? I wonder if he wants to come visit our apartment or something.” I picked up, and he said, “I’m at Burger King, where are you?” And that is when I realized that it was Tuesday, the day that Daniel and I were going to the Knitting Factory in Hollywood to watch Boys Like Girls. I rushedly changed to a more pop-punk-rock outfit (Converses!) and found Daniel in Westwood about 10 minutes later.

We left around 4:15 and got to the Knitting Factory a little after five. Doors were to open at six, so while we waited, I went into the nearby CVS and purchased my very own pair of Hearos Earplugs!!!! Hahaha, so exciting, they came in their own box. It was the first time I was planning to use earplugs at a rock concert, so I didn’t really know what it’d feel like. I wondered if it’d be slightly less exciting to not hear the bass shaking, etc, but actually, it was totally fine. It’s worth a little less excitement to retain my hearing for the future. I’d like to still be able to listen to music when I’m old and falling apart

The venue was TINY. Even smaller than House of Blues, (I’m really bad at estimating but) There were probably less than 100 people attending the concert. Low ceiling with a (very very) small mezzanine area (from where the stage couldn’t be seen save from a screen). No reception, like at every other concert venue. The ground was bouncy when everyone jumped, it reminded me of ol’ Club Banana in Beijing with it’s dance floor. Anyway. It was hot and sweaty as expected. It had been awhile since I went to a concert, so I was pretty excited

The opening bands were The Ready Set and Never Shout Never. I wasn’t impressed by The Ready Set - they sounded unoriginal, slightly electronic and too pop-y. When the lead singer of Never Shout Never came on stage, I thought he was a girl. When he started talking, his voice was also borderline identified as female. But soon I learned (from fangirls screaming “I love you!”) that his name was Christofer Drew. And he sang about his experiences with girls. So I guess he’s a straight male. But kind of questionable… Regardless, I decided that I liked Never Shout Never, because of 1. What a cute band name! 2. The songs they sang were really fun and 3. They used a lot of random instruments in their set. After Boys Like Girls came on stage, all the high school chicks in the audience freaked out (and intimidated me). After their performance, I decided that they’re kind of annoying - in the middle of the concert, while they were getting the audience excited/pumped up, they tried to make a mosh pit. Also, they swore too much. Turn off Oh well. Being at the concert reminded me how much I’m not in high school anymore. I barely had the energy to five hours, let alone be excited through all three sets. (I can’t even fathom how I was able to participate in Dance Marathon last year…)

Anyway, the result of that tiring afternoon is a slight dislike of Boys Like Girls and a strong support for Never Shout Never. Go download their music on iTunes! Be legal!

P.S. I think I’m addicted to Sims 3…