So now I'm done with my adventures in LA and it feels strange knowing that when I come back from Hawaii I'll be here permanently. My graduation ceremonies went by without much fanfare. Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark bailed on us because of the UC workers' protest. Although I support the workers cause to receive livable wages, I believe their strategy of choice eventually backfired when the graduating class and their families realized that the speakers we were looking forward to listening to have dropped out because they refused to cross the picket lines. They made a day in which was supposed to to celebrate and be proud of our accomplishments into a politically charged event. Way to piss off tens of thousands of people folks! If they understood the funding issues that the UCs have to deal with then perhaps they would have had better impact if they took it to Sacramento. The UCs have their hands tied when it comes to funding for the next several years and they are doing everything from paying less for their workers to raising student fees. I worry that our UC system will have enough funds to stay afloat for the next few years, I'm proud to have (almost) graduated from such a prestigious institution and I hope future generations will benefit from the education they get there as well.

Planning for the wedding is in semi-full swing. I plan to really get my hands dirty when I'm finished with my study abroad program in Hawaii. I'll be leaving on July 5th and coming back mid-August. I love Hawaii so I'm really excited to get this opportunity to learn more about their native culture and history. The sweetest part is that Rob will be flying in after my program ends and we'll be spending a week there on vacation. W00t!!

Rob and I will be getting our engagement photos taken tomorrow! I'm nervous and excited at the same time. We're going to start out at Hakone Gardens and then make our way to Half Moon Bay. I'll let you know how it goes!

He has been one of my heroes for awhile now. He is able to gather a huge crowd whenever he's at an event. People line up and camp out for days just to spend five seconds of their time in his presence. He moves people and governments with his inspirational speeches and common-sense wisdom. I appreciate that he is able to be goofy and crack jokes that are actually funny instead of being serious all the time. He was able to set the country towards better a direction after a long period where people lost faith in our government. Much of what he says ring true to me:

"The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense."
"Politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology."
"Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think."
"Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all."
"We need not just a new generation of leadership, but a new gender of leadership."
"It's one thing to have good intentions; it's another thing entirely to change people's lives."
"Sometimes I feel like a fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs."

This past weekend I had the pleasure of introducing some friends from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. Rob drove down with our friends Mike and Nathan who have never been to LA before and were interested in experiencing what it had to offer. The challenge was to plan an itinerary that reflected certain elements of LA that were more or less stereotypical but not touristy. Since LA is a mishmash of about 88 different cultures within one metropolitan area, I had to resort to the few places I've already visited before. Strangely enough, I've lived in LA for a total of nine months now and I haven't really had a chance to explore as much as I'd like of it because of school. I think though that in the end I managed to pull off an entertaining and informative experience for my guests. Rob has the pictures on his blog of the trip.

I've been feeling unusually lethargic recently and I can't seem to pinpoint the reason why. It might have something to do with my new exercise routine, which involves a lot of toning and strength training now. As a result, my sleeping schedule is inconsistent. Perhaps it also has to do with the extremely dense readings assigned by my professors. Sometimes I feel as if my mind is a machete cutting through the underbrush of political philosophy and public opinion. It can be quite a tiring exercise, although I'm learning a lot and am enjoying most of it.

This is the end of the first week of classes and I am already overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do to stay on top of it all. I took the liberty to calculate the total minimum amount of hours of class preparation time required and it turned out to be over 50 hours a week, including studying, reading, preparing presentations, and writing papers. If I also include into this total minimum amount of preparation hours the amount of class time, it increases to about 70 hours a week. Oh and my commute plus time walking to/from class equals about 8 hours a week. I had hoped to work/intern this quarter or at least have some semblance of a social life, but those are out the window now.

I got approved for a studio apartment down in LA and I'll be moving into it soon. There are a few reasons why I'm excited about this. (1) No more driving down and searching in such a difficult housing market. One tenant who was trying to find someone else to take over her lease said that she literally got a hundred responses after posting on Craigslist. (2) It's my own place. I've never had my own apartment before with no one else living with me. The freedom! (3) It's the same amount I paid last year, which is considered a steal in that area. Utilities included! The only minus that I can see is that it's further from campus than where I lived last year. The bus ride would take about the same amount of time without transfers so it's okay.

Correction: I mistook this apartment with another one I was looking at and this one has carpets. I'm okay with that. Plus this one has an avocado tree right outside my door! Guacamole anyone?

My friends and I had a discussion on the topic of moving a few weeks ago. They told me what I thought at the moment to be an absurd number of times each of them had moved in their entire life. I went back home and dug through the spider webs in my head and counted the amount of times that I've moved. Turns out my number beat all of theirs. When I move back to LA later this month, it would count as my 19th move and the 20th place I've ever lived since birth. This number does not include the places I've gone to visit relatives or on vacation.

I am studying in Political Sociology the concept of social capital. Social capital has a few different, and oftentimes vague, definitions but the version I'm referring to is Putnam's. Robert D. Putnam's book Bowling Alone has recently been known to be the definitive source of research for this area of study. I read through most of the book so far and am beginning to understand why people feel so isolated and fail to participate in groups anymore. While he presents a valid case about the effects of low social capital in our society, I think there's more to the source of the problem than mainly television and the internet. I think he didn't emphasize enough that Americans are working more hours with less pay and their job security is less certain than it was half a century ago. We are also now driven by a highly consumer-centric society. Even our "experts" are hired by businesses to support faulty claims that their products will make us happy. So it's difficult to distinguish who to trust or not. He compared groups that are supposed to represent the interests of the people to mail order catalogs. Their members (like the AARP) only participate by writing a check for them once a year. Some of those groups don't even have any members and yet they exist! So who can we trust? Our families and close friends? Toqueville once warned of the dangers of individualism. By focusing inward rather than outward, democracy cannot possibly survive. This does not mean to ignore your own self-interest. In fact, it would require enlightened self-interest to help someone out in the hope that it may come back to you if enough people were of the same mindset (Sidenote: I highly recommend watching the movie "Pay It Forward" for a better idea of this concept). The problem is that there's a general decline in people who have that type of mindset. I learned that evangelicals tend to focus inward rather than outward like other denominations of the Protestant church. That may explain why the spreading of this type of faith has lead to high social capital within it's confines, but provides low social capital to the nation overall.