Tuesday, February 28, 2006

OMG IT'S 5AM



and this is how i die. forgive me oda-sensei, for trying to imitate your work of art. i'll do better next time, promise

Monday, February 27, 2006

Sunday, February 26, 2006

we're still proud of you latics

united defeated wigan 4-0 in the league cup final. apparently the reds ran rampant for not having won a silverware in a long time. nonetheless, wigan deserves mad props for getting here, considering they just got promoted from the championship last year.

but the best part of the game is when all the players celebrated by wearing t-shirts bearing the words "FOR YOU SMUDGE," dedicating their performance to their team-mate alan smith, who broke his leg and dislocated his ankle in the FA cup match against liverpool last week.





FOR YOU, SMUDGE. get well soon. the fans can't wait to see you back in action.

night elves zen

what is the sound of three idiots playing warcraft at 5.37am?

Saturday, February 25, 2006

tyrannosaurus

the little turd's too big for my pocket. T_T



i got carue and choppa too. sue was too purple and hattori wasn't as cute as the picture.

typically classic



these habits get worse the longer you are in college.

Friday, February 24, 2006

physics 1, sanity 0

when you are taking an exam and you find that one or more of the following apply to you:

1. you've spent more than two days doing it,
2. you've used up about ten pages of paper for answer and you still have some problems that you haven't started,
3. everything looks greek to you,
4. you really have no idea what you are writing down,
5. things that made sense three seconds ago suddenly stop making sense,
6. you've used up more than twenty pages of scratch paper, and three pencil leads,

then it's probably about time that you give up.

but you and i are resilient people. we don't give up without a fight. even if we have to die, we will die honorably. and when we do give up and wave that white flag that signals our surrender, we do it in style.

damn right, people. when it comes time to give up, we will give up in style!



go giraffe go!

Thursday, February 23, 2006

judgment day, part one

update on gradschool:

~ caltech
~ university of minnesota
~ university of washington
~ UC san diego
~ UC davis
~ UC irvine - ADMITTED
~ UC berkeley
~ UC santacruz
~ UC santa barbara - DENIED

two down, seven more to go. at least now i have somewhere to go and don't actually have to get a job.

when a child is born

i just got another nephew. that makes it a lot of nephews, few nieces, and still counting. and i'm not even twenty-two.

alvin was born on february 19th, 2006. 3.25kg, 51cm. yes, i use the metric system, did i scare you? my cousin should name their next sons theodore and simon. then i'll have three little chipmunks in my family.

welcome to this world of pain and suffering, little alvin. here's an advice: NEVER, EVER BE A PHYSICS MAJOR.

eDIT: picture for those who wanted to see.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

eh, what now?

warning: the forbidden, dreadful, four-letter word will appear in this entry.

yes, love.

no, this is not going to be cheesy or sappy or anywhere close to that. in fact, this isn't going to be an about the four-letter word itself, but instead, about getting rid of it. and no, this isn't going to be a long entry.

love is like drugs. it's an addiction. it makes you happy when it's there, it makes you sad and depressed when it's gone. then there are times when things just don't work out and you are forced to leave this state of happiness and get rid of this "love." so you try. you keep yourself busy and you would do just about anything including drinking yourself to sleep to forget about this four-letter word. this all works fine until the backlash occurs.

that's right. love is a drug. just when you think you've gotten rid of it, it comes back and sucks you right back in with an even more powerful force. what makes it worse is that everytime you try to get rid of it, it becomes even more and more powerful. just like an enemy you can never beat.

you know what they say. if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

e1n.kefi.org

yes, i am finally starting a webcomic.



the reason for this is because the person who gave me free hosting has been bitching about how ungrateful i am for not using his hosting for something like my webcomic.

so there it is, the index page's picture. expect the word "ENTER" to appear there sometime after i actually got the content layout done, which isn't going to be anytime soon. i've taken the first step into finishing (or rather, starting) this webcomic, so i will take a break. long break.

go procrastination.

anyway, as i was drawing this, few things came to mind:

1. dude has a daycare business in which he takes care of pingins (pingin = little penguin) while their parents go work or forage. we decided to go on a picnic so dude decided to take the pingins with him. myu is the pingin who is crying because he got hit by jii's kendo sword. jii is the one whose back is facing you. baa is trying to get a revenge. pingins are violent. you might wanna write that down on your notebook.

2. sam brought a 12-pack of heineken, which was found by a wandering giraffe. the giraffe drank all but one and got drunk. what you are seeing here is sam protecting the last bottle of beer with his life.

3. kevin chopped some woods so we can have a bonfire next to the river. no one wanted to help him because we were all lazy and had better things to do, like drinking coffee with your favorite panda. and no, the bonfire will not cause a forest fire because i said so.

Monday, February 20, 2006

not made of rubber



a not-so-funny comic, but hey, every comic-stripper can have his bad days, right?

honestly, all i wanted to do was to draw that angry face on that last panel, but since production is coming up and i have to come up with a comic, here's one.

based loosely on a true story. loose in a way that i didn't really get an apple thrown at my face.

the girl's name is kiki. i'll do a profile on her if i ever get around to it.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

happy 400

400 chapters. that means one piece has been going for over 8 years now. props to you, oda, and thank you for giving us such a wonderful manga that is one piece.

supposed to be grading, but upon the revelation that the cute elephant funk freed is actually a damn sword, i couldn't help but to make this omake.



my dad sent me another doodle he did of john lennon. this one looks much better, but the eyes seem to be a bit crooked.



either way, it's still awesome. there is no way i'll be able to draw like him. i'll just stick with the funnies.

Friday, February 17, 2006

the reward of being a TA

is having students giving you cute, honest answers like this:



the green is my doodle, btw.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

this story is about a fridge

the mail on the doormat consisted of the usual things: a rude letter threatening to take away his american express card, an invitation to apply for an american express card, and a few bills of the more hysterical and unrealistic type. he couldn't understand why they kept sending them. the cost of the postage seemed merely to be good money thrown after bad. he shook his head in wonderment at the malevolent incompetence of the world, threw the mail away, entered the kitchen and approached the fridge with caution.

it stood in the corner.

the kitchen was large and shrouded in a deep gloom that was not relieved, only turned yellow, by the action of switching on the light. dirk squatted down in front of the fridge and carefully examined the edge of the door. he found what he was looking for. in fact he found more than he was looking for.

near the bottom of the door, across the narrow gap that separated the door from the main body of the fridge, which held the strip of gray insulating rubber, lay a single human hair. it was stuck there with dried saliva. that he had expected. he had stuck it there himself three days earlier and had checked on it several occasions since then. what he had not expected to find was a second hair.

he frowned at it in alarm. a SECOND hair?

it was stuck across the gap in the same way as the first one, only this hair was near the top of the fridge door, and he had not put it there. he peered at it closely, and even went so far as to go and open the old shutters on the kitchen windows to let some extra light in upon the scene.

the daylight shouldered its way in like a squad of policemen and did a lot of WHAT'S-ALL-THISing around the room, which, like the bedroom, would have presented anyone of an aesthetic disposition with difficulties. like most of the rooms in dirk's house it was large, looming, and utterly disheveled. it simply sneered at anyone's attempts to tidy it, sneered at them and brushed them aside like one of the small pile of dead and disheartened flies that lay beneath the window, on top of a pile of old pizza boxes.

the light revealed the second hair for what it was---gray at the root, the rest dyed a vivid metallic orange. dirk pursed his lips and thought very deeply. he didn't need to think hard in order to realize who the hair belonged to---there was only one person who regularly entered the kitched looking as if her head had been used for extracting metal oxides from industrial waste---but he did have seriously to consider the implications of the discovery that she had been plasstering her hair across the door of his fridge.

it meant that the silently waged conflict between himself and his cleaning lady had escalated to a new and more frightening level. it was now, dirk reckoned, fully three months since this fridge door had been opened, and each of them was grimly determined not to be the one to open it first. the fridge no longer merely stood there in the corner of the kitchen, it actually lurked. dirk quite clearly remember the day on which the thing had started lurking. it was about a week ago, when dirk had tried a simple subterfuge to trick elena---the old bat's name was elena, pronounced to rhyme with "cleaner," which was an irony that dirk now no longer relished---into opening the fridge door. the subterfuge had been deftly deflected and had nearly rebounded horribly on dirk.

he had resorted to the strategy of going to the local mini-market to buy a few simple groceries. nothing contentious---a little milk, some eggs, some bacon, a carton or two of chocolate custard and a simple half-pound of butter. he had left them, innocently, on top of the fridge as if to say, "oh, when you have a moment, perhaps you could pop these inside..."

when he had returned that evening his heart bounded to see that they were no longer on top of the fridge. they were gone! they had not been merely put aside or put on a shelf, they were nowhere to be seen. she must finally have capitulated and put them away. in the fridge. and she would surely have cleaned it out once it was actually open. for the first and only time his heart swelled with warmth and gratitude toward her, and he was about to fling open the door of the thing in relief and triumph when an eighth sense (at the last count, dirk reckoned he had eleven) warned him to be very, very careful, and to consider first where elena might have put the cleared-out contents of the fridge.

a nameless doubt gnawed his mind as he moved noiselessly toward the garbage bin beneath the sink. holding his breath, he opened the lid and looked.

there, nestling in the folds of the fresh black bin liner, were his eggs, his bacon, his chocolate custadd and his simple half-pound butter. two milk bottles stood rinsed and neatly lined up by the sink into which their contents had presumably been poured.

she had thrown it away. rather than open the fridge door, she had thrown his food away.

he looked around slowly at the grimy, squat white monolith, and that was the exact moment at which he realized without a doubt that his fridge had now begun seriously to lurk.

he made himself a stiff black coffee and sat, slightly trembling. he had not even looked directly at the sink, but he knew that he must unconsciously have noticed that two clean milk bottles there, and some busy part of his mind had been alarmed by them.

the next day he had explained all this away to himself. he was becoming needlessly paranoiac. it had surely been an innocent or careless mistake on elena's part. she had probably been brooding distractedly on her son's attack of bronchitis, peevishness or homosexuality or whatever it was that regularly prevented her from either turning up or from having a noticeable effect when she did. she was italian and probably had absentmindedly mistaken his food for garbage.

but the business with the hair changed it all. it established beyond all possible doubt that she knew exactly what se was doing. she was under no circumstances going to open the fridge door until he opened it first, and he was under no circumstances going to open the fridge until she did.

obviously she had not noticed his hair, otherwise it would have been her most effective course simply to pull it off, thus tricking him into thinking she had opened the fridge. he should presumably now remove her hair in the hope of pulling that same trick on her, but even as he sat there he knew that somehow that wouldn't work, aand that they were locked into a tightening spiral of non-fridge opening that would lead them both to madness or perdition.

he wondered if he could hire someone to come and open the fridge.

aren't you too big for the sidewalk?

one of the many things that most if not all of human beings have problems with is understanding.

of course this problem is often deemed to be not as significant as opening a can of corned beef (essential for survival), resisting sexual urges (essential to prevent overpopulation), or doing dishes right after you're done eating (essential for sanitation, as well as sanity), but this is simply because no one has bothered to think of it as a problem. people who did realize this as a problem often decided to announce it to the entire world and write a book about it, but those books tend to get cluttered in the "self-help" and "relationship" section and the authors casted away as lunatics.

the problem with understanding is that everyone is aware of it as something that they have to do, but no one is actually doing it; they just think that they are. to complicate matter even further, add the egoistic nature of human beings into the equation, and you have something that is just about as unsolvable as a transcedental equation with two variables. and no, no graphical method on this.

human beings think. we think. descartes said "i think, therefore i am." thinking is a privilege; it is okay to think. but we often take advantage of this god-given privilege and actually take one step further down the line to think about how OTHER PEOPLE think. this is where things usually start to go wrong. you can't. everyone's mind is unique to oneself, and unless you are some fictional character or some abnormal human being by my definition, there is no chance in heaven, hell, or purgatory you can know what someone else is thinking. see, sometimes, a person doesn't even have the ability to know what he himself is thinking, or why he is thinking what he is thinking. if you are still having problems with this, don't even think about trying to take one step further and think about what others are thinking. it would be like taking lagrangian mechanics without ever having taken a physics class in your life. it is just not doable.

if you think this is bad enough, think again. often times, we even crossed the thick, bright, reflective red line between taking advantage of the god-given privilege and actually threatening to be given more by thinking about what other people think WE think. then all hell breaks loose. at this point, even the devil himself would probably come up to you and say, "man, you're fucked up as shit." this is analogous to someone who failed elementary school, yet insisted to go on to middle school, failed that also, then insisted to go on to highschool, failed that as well, and still insisted to go on to college. i've never been so glad such a thing as standardized testing exists.

of course, it is only human that we speculate about how others think, and by doing so, speculating how others think we think. we are all strategists in a sense; we all want to plan out our course of action such that we have the maximum advantage over everyone else in the battlefield. but here's something that you and the rest of the people in the world have to realize: some people are good strategists, some people suck. and here's another thing to know: there are more sucky strategists than there are good ones. much much more. so it is safe to say that there is a bigger probability that you will fall into the sucky category. therefore, if ever you find yourself thinking about how other people are thinking, please cease and decease. if this fails and you find yourself thinking about what other people think you think, please do anything humanly possible to stop this, even if it involves hurting yourself.

cognitive scientists have fancy names for this. anything that involves you thinking is called cognition, and anything that involves you thinking about how others think is called meta-cognition. i have different terms for this. anything that involves you thinking is called good, anything that involves you thinking about how other people think is called stupid, and anything that involves you thinking about how other people think you think is called fucked up.

cease and decease. only then you can have a peace of mind your little subconsciousness has always craved for. there is a story that supports this notion. i will post later after i get home since the book is at home.

flying red

oh shit. you've got to be joking me. this is the first thing i want to be on after going merii in odaiba.





lookie! it's got sir alex, rio, ji, roo, and ronny. and the devil himself. wonder if they ever gonna sell a model of this?

that was easy

i bought a button from staples that has the word EASY on it and speaks "THAT WAS EASY" when you push the button because i thought i was a stupid thing to buy and buying something stupid sounded like a good idea at the time.

it was stupid, and now i need to throw that button as far away into the pacific ocean as possible. watching it stupidly sit there doing nothing makes me want to push it but everytime i push it the noise that comes out if it drives me nuts. the process itself is almost perpetual, it deals with a heightened emotional state rather than motion.

trudy reminded me about posting about liverpool vs arsenal, so thank you, even though i have actually forgotten what i wanted to write about at that moment.

watching arsenal play this season has been a sad experience. i have never been an arsenal fan, because they used to screw manchester united over with their direct, speed-passing game, but now i couldn't help but feeling sad that they are struggling so hard to find that direct, fast-paced form which they used to be famous for. and back in those days, no matter how much hatred i have for arsenal and arsene "the professor" wenger, i couldn't help but to acknowledge that they were definitely one of the main football force in europe.

not anymore.

playing against liverpool on tuesday, they had at most four attempts on goal, and all of them were very much non-threatening. of course liverpool themselves weren't very enjoyable to watch either, but at least they were more driven to score a goal. teamwork is also another thing that arsenal seem to be lacking these days. back in late 99 - early 2000, arsenal players were like ghosts. whenever they were playing it seemed like they would have at least two or three unmarked players everywhere on the field. they did not pass and run, they pass run with no time delay in between. the flow of game was beautiful and exciting, and even caused manchester united to suffer 3-0 defeats for three seasons in a row, home and away. united was ruling the premier league and europe at this time, but they seemed like a bunch of newbies when it came to playing arsenal. but that was then. now is different.

arsenal have always been known as a team who can cope with the departure of a vital player. tony adams, ian wright, david seaman, ray parlour, emmanuelle petit all left arsenal and they were fine, but it seems that it isn't the case with patrick vieira. unlike those five players, vieira isn't replacable. throughout his many years at arsenal, the entire team seems to have been dependent of him that none of the soldiers know what to do anymore after the general is gone. in a way, vieira is like keane, only keane was smarter and more loyal than vieira.

let me back up that last statement.

when vieira left, what was the message? probably something along the lines of "thank you for all the great years at arsenal, but it's time for me to move on." when keane left, what was the message? "fuck you all, you're not good enough to be a manchester united player because you don't have the playing spirit i have." the first message was nice, but the second one was effective. assuming that this was what keane intended on doing, he gave an incentive for his teammates to get over his absence. his role in manchester united's midfield is as significant as vieira's that his departure might screw manchester united over big time, but he was smart in playing his cards; he left under a bad impression, and thus making it easier for his teammates to develop an ah-fuck-it-who-needs-that-bloody-idiot-anyway attitude. keane was a hard person, vieira was not, although when the two clash it's almost as intense as the world war.

listen up, arsenal dudes. i still don't like you because i'm a manchester united fan, but despite all of the personal hatred, you have provided entertainment to english football, and one of the few reasons why english football is interesting to watch. pull yourself together and rediscover the style with which you used to play. who needs that french dude anyway?

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

damn otter

rule #1 of igalsfy:
if you're alone on valentine's day, don't worry, it won't last long.
rule #2 of igalsfy:
if you're NOT alone on valentine's day, don't worry, it won't last long.


damn right, you french bastard. this deserves a post.

remind me later to make a post about the liverpool vs arsenal game today.

happy valentine's day



i'm tempted to pass this out on campus today. wonder how many bitchslaps i'd accumulate?

Monday, February 13, 2006

it really is hung like a moose

guess what got where?

my william hung comic strip, the first one i have ever made, was published in nova southeastern university's newspaper on november 22, 2004.





thanks, tevokkia!

Sunday, February 12, 2006

oh dad

my dad used to be an awesome artist. he could draw portraits of people without breaking a sweat, but he hadn't been doing that for a long time now, and just recently decided to start drawing again.

his favorite artist is john lennon, and so that's the first thing he decided to quickdoodle tonight. he sent me an email with the doodle attached:



and a comment: i think he looks more like the homeless bum who lived under the bridge next to where we used to live in indonesia.

dad, i agreed. keep doodling, though. XD

i want up, not down



taken from an old, memorable conversation with sam at 3.42am on may 26, 2005.

it's a good thing i blog these things. XD

Saturday, February 11, 2006

hakuna matata

it's our worry-free philosophy.

if there is one adjective that can be used to describe this weekend, it is definitely going to be the antonym of worry-free.

livejournal dudes, i have an RSS feed so you can have posts here delivered to your friends page automatically: e1nabobo. add that to your friends list. thanks to ocean for giving up on telling me to update my LJ and signed me up for this RSS feed instead. remember our roles: you're the workaholic dude, i'm the lazy dude.

i've had sudden cravings for onigiri (riceball) since i had my first one on winter break. i had only seen onigiri in pictures, movies, and manga, but never in real-life---until that one fated day in december. it was a rainy wednesday and i was up in san jose when the girl i was with at the time thought that it would be a good idea to get lunch at her favorite place, a japanese restaurant called "tanto." i was hungry, so of course anything that involved food would sound like a good idea; i agreed and we went to the restaurant. i ordered some tempura and she ordered some ramen dish. at that time i didn't even know that onigiri was one of the items on the menu. a few minutes after taking our orders, the waitress came back with an onigiri, nicely put on a small plate.

i gasped.

it was my first time seeing an onigiri. if you could see the look on my face you would probably be reminded of the lusty look on your face the first time you see a naked person of the opposite sex. i told the girl sitting in front of me how delighted i felt, being able to finally see and taste an onigiri. she looked at me weird and before she could utter a word my right hand instantaneously grabbed the onigiri and brought it closer to my mouth. i had to keep my mouth closed because otherwise i would have created a miniature niagara in san jose. i swallowed my saliva, opened my mouth, and took a bite of the onigiri.

it was mouth orgasm.

i suck at describing things in a flowery manner, but know that i continued munching ferociously on this onigiri because it tasted like heaven. after i killed the onigiri in a barbaric manner, i looked up to the girl in front of me.

e: dang, that was good. do they give free onigiri as appetizer or something?
h: um, no. i think that one came with my ramen.
e: ... oh.

here's an advice: never take your date to places where the probability of you encountering an inanimate object that can reveal your deepest, darkest desire is not zero. i probably made a really bad impression on the girl by stealing her food on the first date, but hell, that onigiri made one lasting impression on me, and that was all that matters.

so i have recently gone on a quest to find good onigiri down here in sandiego. veni, vidi, vici was what i was hoping for, but rather it had been more of veni, vidi, this onigiri tastes shitty.

until today.

i've tried onigiri at different fancy, expensive fine-dining japanese restaurants, but none of them managed to help me relive that moment of short perpetual happiness i had in san jose. in fact, none of them was actually able to serve food that i would consider above decent. the wise regius professor of chronology once said, "it seems odd, don't you think, that the quality of food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness," but i guess that does not apply to japanese cuisine. i find it ironic that the one onigiri that allowed me to relive that moment of happiness in san jose was the one i had at a restaurant that didn't even have a waiter/waitress to clean up your table for you. they actually gave you extra napkins to wipe your table yourself, and they even ask you to return the bowl or plate that you used to eat back to the counter after you're done eating. the floor was dirty with trash and crumpled napkins, and the tray you used to carry your food from the counter to your table was patched up with ducttapes because at some time in the past, it was broken.

they say never to judge a book by its cover, its back, or a page you open randomly. the same rule seems to apply for good quality japanese food.

Friday, February 10, 2006

more panda love

many thanks to canon's creative park for providing me with this, and that bastard french dude igalsfy for linking me to canon's creative park website. i guess it's a good thing that testing cellphones is a boring job.

finished the head first, after getting some glue from kinko's.




this was about two hours after finishing the head.




and now it's sitting proudly on my subwoofer.





oh, and mom, panda head looks good on that little japanese drummer man you bought me for christmas.

OMiGAWD

taboo linked me to KUNGFU PANDA. damn, i can't wait until 2008. jack black, dustin hoffman, and jackie chan, w00t.





go panda go panda go!

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

piled higher and deeper

ocean wanted me to do a complete field report on today's jorge cham's lecture on the power of procrastination.

like hell i'm gonna do that. i think his lecture has its own charisma, one that i will entirely ruin by making a field report on. but it was definitely interesting and worth going. so if you hear dr. cham coming to a university nearby you, definitely go. work your schedule around the lecture. after all, this is just one more thing to help you procrastinate from whatever you're supposed to be doing.

sam just made me noodle soup with dumplings. thanks, sam, you really make a good housewife.

it was about 4 pm when i found him outside warren lecture hall.



funny. there he was, the man whose name in the academia (or rather, pre-academia) is so famous that his website may very well be mentioned once everytime the name einstein is mentioned twice, yet none of the undergraduates around him noticed him. i guess they're all too busy with pennyarcade and never even considered going to gradschool. so i walked up to him and said hi. it was nerve-wracking. it was not awkward, but adrenaline did build up. after all, he is THE man whose 9-year worth of comic-strip archive i've read through several times, whose website i check religiously for new updates, and whose comic strips depict the life of just about every person i know, including myself, almost perfectly. it almost felt like seeing oda standing around at a starbucks, waiting for the person behind the counter to yell out his name and tell him that his caramel macchiato is ready, although if that were to happen instead, i would probably poke him with a long ugly stick instead since i would be too afraid to come close to the god of all mangaka.

and then i will make a shrine of the long ugly stick i poked him with.

i diverged. allow me to go back to where i was. i said hi. he said hi back. we started a conversation. i told him how i've read his archives several times. he asked me which department i'm from. i said physics. he asked what i want to do. i said go to gradschool. he laughed, and among the laughter he asked, "did you REALLY read through all of them?"

i told him i do comics for the school newspaper too. he asked me if he could see it. i snatched him a copy of the latest guardian and his first comment was "nice art. you like manga, don't you?" i guess it was that obvious.

i answered yes. he asked which one i like best. wrong question. asking a one piece fan that question is like asking "who is jesus" to the people on campus with a button all over their backpacks and shirts that says "ask me about jesus." they will keep talking for hours. maybe even days. and that was exactly what i did.

e: one piece
j: ohhh
e: you know?
j: i.. have read
e: how do you like it?
j: the art stands out. it's...
e: childish at the beginning...
j: ... but very sophisticated and detailed
e: yes, yes, very much.
j: i've only read one volume though. what is the one piece?

again, bad question. i started rambling about the void century, the poneglyphs, the truth tablets, the clue tables, the speculations about what one piece is, the ancient weapon, pluton and poseidon, usopp and luffy's fight, nico robin's betrayal, oda's foreshadowing technique, oda's colorspreads, and many other. i might have entirely bored him out of his mind at this point, but it certainly wasn't my fault he brought up one piece. he brought this upon himself.

i showed him some of oda's colorspread which he examined meticulously (or so it seemed). then he asked if there's wireless because he wanted to check his email. probably a habit picked up while being a graduate student. i'm not one yet but i already have that habit. i let him login to ucsd's wireless using my username and password. at the very least, if anything happens to my account, i know who to hunt down.

we talked a bit more about his comics. apparently he did all of his work on a tablet. he claimed to never have used a piece of paper to draw his comics. if that is true then he has a very sophisticated and clear lineart, one that is being sketched in the brain and inked immediately as a final product. he would never have to do rough sketches like what i always had to do. he then went on to check his email on his laptop while i blogged the post before this one. he was still checking and replying email when david and jen arrived, also to attend dr. cham's lecture, saw me and apparently completely missed dr. cham who was sitting next to me, and stormed straight into warren lecture hall 2005. few minutes later david approached me and said: "uh, there's still a class in there." to which i replied "of course, the lecturing dude's over here." apparently david walked into the lecture hall in the middle of a lecture for economics of ocean resources class and yelled out SHIT IT'S FULL and managed to successfully gained the attention of everyone in the class.

after i introduced dr. cham to david and jen, he left to price center to get some food, and came back about twenty minutes later eating a bowl of something. we showed him the (wrong) way to the back entrance of the lecture hall and helped him carry his boxes downstairs. the lecture started a few minutes after this, and we, the undergraduates grabbed a seat in the front row.

bad idea, he was using the slides. i told david it was a good reason to slouch. he bought it. we slouched.

the lecture was brilliant. one person in the back asked if his research presentations have also been this splendid. he answered no with much hesitation. one person in the front asked him what he is actually doing right now in terms of research. he answered he had no idea either. one person behind me asked him how long it took him to get his phd, but then changed his mind before the words came out and decided not to ask instead. i asked him where he got his personalized DR CHAM shoes from. he denied he had them. i told him i saw them with my own eyes. he eventually gave in and admitted he ordered them online.



i borrowed ten bucks from sam and got myself the second book of PhDcomics. the signing line went all the way out of the lecture hall, but it was worth it. he signed it with my red marker, too. he asked if i wanted a drawing. i said of course. he asked of whom. i told him i already have mike, so i want the nameless dude with glasses.



he drew it with a one piece reference. that made my day. after all, what more could a fan ask?

*_*

currently sitting to the dude who does phdcomics.com. in fact, i've been talking to him for the past half-hour or so.

guess what, he has read ONE PIECE. one volume and he LOVES it already. apparently the artwork interests him; "childish but sophisticated," he said. i ended up spending the past half-hour telling him about the whole conspiracy regarding the "void century", the weapons, the ancient language, luffy and usopp's fight, nico robin's betrayal, and world government vs pirate thing that's going on right now. i hope now he finds more reasons to procrastinate.

also showed him the latest comics i did, and he seemed to enjoy it. first thing that he noticed was the artwork, "you like manga." obviously. and that also what got us into talking about one piece.

i intended to finish grading during this two-hour gap between my lab section and his lecture, but screw that. grading can wait...

oh

my

god.

i just noticed something as he's sitting next to me replying emails, which is a habit picked up from graduate school, i guess. he's wearing a black long-sleeved sweater, jeans, and a pair of brown shoes which left shoe has the word DR written on the heel and which right shoe has CHAM written on the same place.

and the dude just left for food. leaving his belongings next to me. mmmm, vandalism.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

weight-shifting

one thing that i have never been able to do throughout the 21 years of my life is letting go of things.

it's remarkably easy to tell myself that some things have to be let go, but it's remarkably hard to actually let it go. i've always thought that this is a trait that my old man passed down to me, because he is the only person i know aside from myself who can never let things go just like that. not unless there's a good reason, and a good explanation.

which probably explains why i'm doing physics.

it's also remarkably easy to tell myself that some things that happen in life needs no explanation, but it's remarkably hard to look at something that is obviously happening but there's no explanation for it to happen. i guess this is another reason why physics is the only thing i can do.

maybe this has to do with maturity? i am, after all, still 21, still an immature child who has a lot of things to learn. maybe five years from now i'll be able to let things go very easily.

an old friend of mine once said that if you say the words "i'm mature," that implies that you're not because "i'm" and "mature" is only an apostrophe and a spacebar away from "immature." funny thing is, i've never even thought about my own maturity level; all this time i've always just simply assumed that i am NOT mature and thus should not worry about it too much. recently, however, i've been thinking about how i can be more mature, and hopefully get closer and closer to the maturity level i'm hoping to reach before too long. the problem is, i have no idea how.

maturity level has nothing to do with how you act in front of people. maturity level has to do with how you deal with yourself. with how you deal with your HEAD. with how you handle and prevent your mind from screwing yourself over. it is remarkably easy to give people advices or suggestions or opinions that lead other people into thinking how mature you are. it is remarkably easy to make people believe that you are acting maturely. it is, however, remarkably hard to be mature with your own mind, because only your mind knows how mature you actually are.

dictionary.com gives a definition of the word "mature" as "of, relating to, or characteristic of full development, either mental or physical," which is a good definition; i just wished it would elaborate more on what it means by "full development," and how one can tell whether it's been fully developed or not.

i believe that maturity is the ability to control the emotions that are flowing in your body, and so i will define it that way. if you are unable to control these emotions, they can fuck you over. they can make you do things that you will regret later, and they will take over your mind such that you will never live in peace. i believe that full development of the mind means being able to control these emotions, rather than letting the emotions control you. this doesn't necessarily mean that you completely and entirely erase all your emotions and live like a robot, but simply being able to say "hey dude, stop and go back to where you belong" whenever the emotions surface and tries to control you.

and that is sadly something that i have not been able to do. 21 years and still making the same mistakes.

on a side note, i miss my grandmother. it's been over seven years now. if i could send some flowers to heaven for her on val's day, i would.

Monday, February 06, 2006

cute <3

as much as i hate it, i have to give this one props.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

and the reign is over

finally.

i'm sick and tired of watching two of my deviations in DA, evilness and zoroxnami, towering above others in terms of favorite counts. i've never considered these two as my best work, yet they were the ones that win people's votes. sadly, the deviations that i can look at with a big smile on my face to express how proud i am of them, like sleigh bells ringing and 8558 kiriban never got as much loving as those two did.

i guess what makes me happy doesn't always make other people happy.

anyhow, the wait has ended. we need more moonwell just reached 47 favorites, which officially won it the devwatcher's favorite deviation award.



i'm honestly glad that the deviation that won the "most favorited deviation" this time is not a fanart. i've always questioned myself whether i'm actually able to make something that is appealing yet original, and not just blindly using someone else's character. in my case, i've always been using oda's characters, which of course, makes things a bit easy since everyone already loves his characters. now that one of the comic strips actually managed to beat my fanarts, i'm actually gaining a little bit of confidence on my original strips.

it's a step forward. or, at least that's how i'd like to think about it.

oh, and by the way, eggy and i had a doodlewar early saturday morning.



i lost, but that's just because i think it was such a fitting ending to whoever dares to defy the god of all mangaka.

and here we go again

it's here: superbowl sunday. the only day of the year where 80% of the male population in the united states stay at home to watch football.

which also means the only day of the year where the majority of the people you see on the streets will be women. if you've got that pickup line ready, today's the day you might actually want to use it, because chances are there will be some upset ladies out there fuming about how her boyfriend is currently ignoring her for football.

here's your chance. go for it, but play it safe.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

chapter 15

the restaurant at the end of the universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. it has been built on the fragmented remains of... it WILL be built on the fragmented... that is to say it will have been built by this time, and indeed has been--

one of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. there is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. there is no problem about changing the course of history--the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. all the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

the major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is dr. dan streetmentioner's TIME TRAVELER'S HANDBOOK OF 1001 TENSE FORMATIONS. it will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. the event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

most readers get as far as the FUTURE SEMICONDITIONALLY MODIFIED SUBINVERTED PLAGAL PAST SUBJUNCTIVE INTENTIONAL before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.

the HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "future perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

to resume:

the restaurant at the end of the universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering.

it is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the end of the universe.

this is, many would say, impossible.

in it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptuous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them.

this, many would say, is equally impossible.

you can arrive (mayan arrive on-when) for any sitting you like without prior (late fore-when) reservation because you can book retrospectively, as it were when you return to your own time (you have on-book haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome)

this is, many would now insist, absolutely impossible.

at the restaurant you can meet and dine with (mayan meetan con with dinan on when) a fascinating cross-section of the entire population of space and time.

this, it can be explained patiently, is also impossible.

you can visit as many times as you like (mayan onvisit re-onvisiling... and so on--for further tense correction consult dr. streetmentioner's book) and be sure of never meeting yourself, because of the embarassment this usually causes.

this, even if the rest were true, which it isn't, is patently impossible, say the doubters.

all you have to do is deposit one penny in a savings account in your own era, and when you arrive at the end of time the operation of compound interest means that the fabulous cost of your meal has been paid for.

this, many claim, is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is why the advertising executives of the star system bastablon came up with this slogan: "if you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breafast at milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe?"


did i ever tell you how much i love douglas adams?

ode to the porcelain god



if you think this isn't possible, think again. that's what i thought too, until it happened to someone.

for the record, this did not happen to sam, nor myself. it happened to someone else, but no names need be mentioned here.

Friday, February 03, 2006

quantum leap

i can't believe how much i used to idolize dr. sam beckett. late night i would be on my bed wrapped up in a warm blanket, imagining myself as a quantum physicist who invented the time travel machine.

i think i will relive that childhood moment tonight when i'm in bed.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

nowhere to be found

my DON'T PANIC button, that is.

due to stupid superbowl sunday, productions for the guardians is moved ahead to saturday. which means that now i have to have a strip done by saturday afternoon, and i'm entirely out of ideas.

if writers get stuck with writer's blocks, artists get stuck with artist's blocks, and scientists get stuck every two minutes or so, i get stuck with the lack of ideas. on better days, i get stuck with the lack of funny ideas, but today i can't even come up with ANY idea. i think it's the lack of sleep combined with the continous hours of studying i've done in the past few days. all work and no play makes e1n a dull boy.

sam and his dad went to mexico yesterday on a business/pleasure trip. both aspects are probably true for his dad, but for sam i believe it would be entirely pleasure. the only business involved would be if he had to pay someone to give him some sort of pleasure. remember, sam: play it safe, don't do anything stupid, and don't die. this is not hongkong.

ayumi hamasaki's HEAVEN is playing on my ipod right now. it has never failed to fill up my mind entirely with black and white portraits of ayumi in that underground subway station. when that happens, however, i have problems thinking and doing what i'm doing, which is probably the reason why it took me about the entire length of the song (4:19) to finish just this one paragraph.

currently sitting at roundtable, eating lunch while watching serie A game between lecce and intermilan. i've been here for the past hour and everytime i look up from my powerbook screen onto the TV, all i've been seeing is someone getting carded, getting treated for injuries, free-kicks, throw-ins, goal-kicks, and other dead balls situation. never once in the past hour there had been one instance where i saw the ball moving except for when the replay was on. there was a stereotype that serie A is boring because the flow of game stops every twenty-seconds... let me rephrase that. there was a stereotype that serie A is boring because the game does not flow at all since it stops every twenty-seconds due to fouls or ball out of play that i refused to believe. it is therefore once again proven that stereotypes exist because they are true, or used to be true for a significant period of time in the past. people are not THAT creative.

one midterm down, no more to go. branson's quantum class only has takehome exam, which would be bad, but at least i get to do it at home, probably while watching monk or quantum leap.

i just looked up again and there was a replay on a goal for intermilan, scored by the used-to-be-famous portugal dude, luis figo. i looked up again and someone from lecce got red-carded. still no ball movement for me. this is ridiculous. they might as well be playing rugby and no one would be able to tell the difference.

*looked up*

foul again, i'm going to give up and go to class. screw this.

implusive

that's right. ocean is such an implusive person. not impulsive, but implusive.

XD

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

$40

didn't win the top 3 prizes, but at least it was accepted and i got extra cash.

lamb shift

branson was trying to pull down the screen for his slide presentation today and failed miserably.

he succeeded after thirty or so attempts and muttered: a theorist would have given up long time ago.

XDDDDDDDDD

an old quote from driscoll: an experimentalist must treat a theorist the way a beautiful young lady treats a handsome young man --- listen to everything he's got to say, but do not believe every single one of them.

*insert profanity here*

i would like to fill up this post with cusswords, but since my parents are reading this, it might not be too good of an idea.

i hate tuesdays. many people hate mondays because it's the first day of the week and it signals the end of the weekend, but mondays are fine for me. it's tuesdays that i hate. i hate tuesdays more than i hate spicy food, UCLA, MIT, and lorenzo lamas.

every tuesday, i'm forced to wake up 0930am the latest so that i can make sure i get to school by 11 to turn in my homework for a ridiculously uninteresting physics class which lasted until 1230p. then i have another class from 0200p until 0330p, which is followed almost immediately by four hours of TA-ing, 0400p to 0800p. four hours of TAing, that means four hours of talking PHYSICS to people who are not interested in knowing about physics. it's almost like being a door-to-door door salesman, only worse because you don't get a commission even if they do buy what you say.

after one helluva long day, i come home, and what awaits me at home? physics homework due wednesday.

fuck.

it is now 3am in the morning, my eyes are red, i've only managed to finish two out of the four problems assigned, number three just gave me a NON-SENSICAL ZERO, number four looks utterly unappetizing since the question itself used up about half a page, my canker sore is killing me, my hair is still falling off, i'm entirely out of underwear, i'm entirely out of footlocker t-shirts, and i can't even crank up beatles on the speakers because old bastards next door are so fucking sensitive.

fuck.

fuck. fuck. fuck.

uiasdyfiu sdilfhwael iufyia;sd fh;saui eufp;uisdhfpawiuhfasdl; iufhad uisd;fh;uipwy4efip usdhfba; jf;askjfa;sdfu;uowieh ;auh a;fuis dafh;sd uifas;doiuhui ha;soi uddfh; oiuhasdiouad; a;dsi fa;sduifuiowp hiou;siuhd

i hope that successfully expressed my frus-fucking-tration.