OMFG Update

I guess it's been a while since I've written. There is only one more week of summer left, and to be honest I am sort of hyped up for the senior year. I am looking forward to all the class activities. Yeah, I thought I would never say that.

My highlight of the summer was definitely spending the month of July at UCSD for COSMOS.

Some key moments:

-Remember how I talked about Black's Beach, the nude beach near UCSD? Well one class at COSMOS accidentally passed by the beach on the way back from a field trip (what a bad PR move) and found it was full of old naked white people. That's a Eurotrip moment. Yay!

-The last few days of COSMOS, a couple guys in my suite reported hearing a very scary and sinister laugh coming from god knows where past midnight. My roommate heard it around 1:30 a.m. and thought it was coming from a vent on the ceiling but we have no vents in our room. People got really freaked out, and I slept through it each time.

-Girls. Younger than 18. Off limits. Jonathan Chang thought they were hotter than girls he's used to seeing, but I didn't think so. Of course I am quite a connoisseur when it comes to the fine art of woman judging.

-During our four weeks, we had two mandatory COSMOS dances (dance, bitch!). The dances were nothing like I expected. I was really tempted to videotape the whole thing and show it to Mrs. Scott as a cultural exchange program. What happened was a mob of 40-50 people gathered in a tight circle in the center of the dance floor and started rubbing bodies against each other. I don't think it could be considered freaking because when you freak, you are usually aware of who you're interacting with. Not so in this case. This was just a giant orgy that I could not partake in because I was 18. Although... I did get freaked while drinking soda on the benches.

-My nickname. For the latter part of COSMOS, I was called the god of sex. If you are confused, check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_(god)

-My professor was Dr. Carlos Vera. Bioengineering professor at UCSD with a Ph.D/M.D. He was probably the most intelligent person I've ever met. He was pretty shy and quiet but a really nice guy with a good sense of humor. He made us think out of the box and be innovative. He teaches at a medical school in Mexico every morning and then drives up to UCSD to do research. On the last day, he told me I would be an excellent scientist and that he was afraid I would love science so much that I would forget everything else in life. Definitely the biggest compliment thus far.

Yesterday when my dad came home from work, there was a pretty bad vibe between my parents as usual so I decided to take a walk around the apartment complex at night. It was the first time I had done that in a while, and it felt good. Every home has a a light hanging by the door, and when I am walking through the path lined by tall trees, it feels like I am walking in a giant forest and there are tree houses with lights. It's nice to walk by the lighted windows knowing that inside there's someone, someone like me. I wonder about what the people inside are doing and thinking. But they're surviving really, and it's a beautiful thing. I see a family sitting behind a blaring television in the living room and it makes me smile. Yesterday, there was a woman leaning out in the outside patio with a cigarette in her fingers. She was surviving too. You know what I love about airplane flights? When the plane is getting ready for landing and through the window, you see millions and millions of lights: street lights, house lights, car lights, building lights. Yeah you can talk about air pollution but it's a beautiful thing. For every light you see, someone is there. That's our civilization you see. It's like a person is standing there with a torch.

Listening to a section of Barack Obama's Q/A session at Saddleback, I was particularly struck by one thing he said. When asked why he wanted to run for president, he said that there was this American spirit of helping others. Cheering for the underdog. Believing that the person next to you can achieve their dream just like you can. And he wants to run for president because he thinks the U.S. is at a critical junction where this spirit might be in danger. I believe him. There is such a spirit at America, or at least I feel it. It's the American Beauty. It's a powerful, morally conscious, and incredibly benevolent force. Almost divine. And I also agree with him that the spirit is in jeopardy. There are both domestic and foreign causes for this. But our next president will help determine whether the spirit can live on. We are all human and one. PEACE.

Next entry: something about The Dark Knight