Skeptickle » UCLA

Sheesh, I'm terrible at updating this thing!

2008-06-25T02:54:04Z

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!

What Rings True

2008-05-22T23:37:14Z

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."

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Visitors

2007-11-19T08:12:41Z

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.

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Tired (but happy)

2007-10-31T01:32:53Z

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.

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Back into the swing of things.

2007-10-05T07:00:09Z

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.

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Apartment of My Own

2007-09-18T00:31:10Z

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?

Moving back to LA soon.

2007-09-06T17:54:09Z

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.

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Bowling Alone

2007-02-27T03:17:36Z

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.

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Zombie

2006-12-14T22:17:00Z

I feel like a zombie today. I didn't get much sleep last night for a variety of reasons. I'm pretty sure I did badly on my Poli Sci final. For some sick reason, he told us to study the questions from the quizzes and none of the questions on the final were even close to what were on the quizzes. I can't wait for tomorrow at 5pm when this will all be over and I can make my 5 hour trip back home to Rob. Mmm, Rob, the giver of backrubs and provider of good night sleeps. My laptop battery's running low so I must get going. Adios.

Just Fantastic.

2006-12-12T20:28:52Z

I woke up this morning and got an email from our Acting Chancellor informing me that "a restricted campus database containing certain personal information has been illegally accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker....The information stored on the affected database includes names and Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and contact information." He suggested placing a fraud alert on my credit file. You know, I might just do that since people are coming at me from both sides trying to steal/view my information. I'm getting my mail viewed and perhaps taken at home and my information has been compromised at school. WTF! I know that it happens more than it should on UC campuses, especially Berkeley, and that knowledge is disappointing. There's always some vulnerability in the security system and they don't prepare for it until it has been breached.

This is the Press Release of what happened in detail.

Finals Week

2006-12-10T02:59:54Z

I have finally reached my first Finals Week at UCLA. I'm a little intimidated but also looking forward to it being over so that I can relax during my winter break. I'm doing well in two of my classes and if I blow them away with my finals, I'm sure I'd get at least a B+ for each of them. My third class is more up in the air. Most of our grade is based on a paper that was due yesterday and our final which is on Thursday. It's difficult to determine how I did until after I actually get our grades for the class. I am rather proud of the results of our group project for my Political Communications class. The assignment was to work on two commercials (one negative and one positive) for a fake presidential campaign between Joe Biden and Mitt Romney. Our negative ad of Mitt Romney was voted for both the "Funniest" and "Coolest" Awards category in our peer evaluations, which boosted our grades significantly. My group and I worked on that for the entire quarter and everything came together nicely. If I hear of anyone who wants to see the ad, I might put it up on Youtube later on this week.

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The Upset

2006-12-04T19:33:43Z

I know it's a little late to post about this but I have a theory as to why UCLA defeated USC this year. I remember a few years ago I attended my first college football game, Stanford vs. Berkeley. It was held at Berkeley and Berkeley won after a 7 year losing streak. I was on the UCLA campus this year when UCLA won. There is only one possible conclusion to this trend of events. My presence on the campuses of the underdogs has the outworldly effect of helping them win. I should get paid for this.

Comment on the UCLA Police Tasering Incident

2006-11-18T07:04:29Z

I'm sure most of you have heard about this incident that happened a couple of nights ago in UCLA's Powell Library. I've heard both sides of the story and seen the video of it and here are my conclusions based on what I know.

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I know why so many LA women are blond.

2006-11-15T01:30:21Z

I discovered the vast differences in water quality between regions when I moved to LA. Rob's been preaching it for months and now his words are no longer speculation. According to him, the Bay Area's water quality is much worse than the water from any other place he's been to. Since I've lived in the Bay Area almost my entire life I didn't have anything to compare it to. Until now. LA's water, I noticed has so much chorine in it that you can both taste and smell it. Every time I get out of the shower, I feel like I just got out of a pool. You know that weird dry feeling you get after being in the pool for a bit? Yeah, it's like that. I'm afraid to hand wash my nice clothes because it might take out the color. I also noticed that it had bleached my hair so that in the sunlight, it's a lot lighter than it used to be. I researched a little on LA's water supply and there were other worse and not as immediately noticable elements in it. For example, the arsenic levels are just below the maximum amount allowed and there's ongoing research to correlate that with the high percentage of miscarriages around here. Bay Area's water may not be ideal but it's a whole lot better than the sludge they serve down here. The straight tap water up there tastes much better than the filtered water down here. I can't wait to get back up there for the holidays!

Lessons on Diplomacy.

2006-11-03T20:34:07Z

There's so much drama involved in foreign relations that it's not unlike a network soap opera. So much of how a country may conduct itself on the world stage can be compared to how a person may conduct him/herself in interpersonal relations. Of course the stakes, interests, and values are different but you can easily draw parallels when studying events, behaviors, and motives.

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Week 1 at UCLA

2006-10-04T08:34:50Z

...and already 200 pages of reading must be done by the end of the week. I've read about half of that so hopefully I'll be caught up by Friday. I swear that I have ADD because whenever I read something I have to read it at least twice for it to register. I'd "read" a paragraph and then forget what the heck it was saying so I have to go back and reread it again. It's so tedious sometimes.

Yesterday I drove up to Studio City to be filmed in one of Phil Angelides' campaign commercials. In case you don't know, he's running for governor to replace the Governator this year. I hope you guys look into him and vote accordingly. You can only see me for a second in the commerical but it was worth the free lunch. The house that it was filmed in belongs to the director and it was a pretty awesome house. It's the kind of house that's not too fancy or large but is well-designed enough to impress all of us. I can imagine owning a house like that someday. I also got to meet a few interesting people. One of them works for John Kerry right now; yup folks, he's still alive (politically speaking).

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At this moment, I am at peace...

2006-10-02T07:59:21Z

Classes started on Thursday and it was a bit hectic that week but everything's all good now. I have caught up on my reading (mostly), did a little yoga and pilates, listened to Bill Maher's latest podcast and NPR, watched Take the Lead (again), straighten up my room, and read a few news articles online. All these things seem boring and mundane but a lot of them really help me unwind and prepare for the week ahead.

I am happy with the classes that I enrolled in though I wish I'd enrolled in four. My orientation counselor strongly advised against it and had me enroll in only three. They are American Diplomatic History, Diplomacy and War, and Political Communications. The last one seems the most interesting to me and I might look further into the prospect of double majoring in Communications at the end of the quarter (since I can't double major in Media Art ). I really like the professors as well.

I learned recently that the ~~UCLA Alumni Association~~ a wealth group of alumni is paying students to rat on their professors if they express radical views.

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Life in LA

2006-09-24T22:05:39Z

For some reason it's hard for me to update on this blog. I need to find more motivation to do it. Egads, sorry I'm so lazy!

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The End of the Apartment Hunt.

2006-09-08T13:21:32Z

Last weekend's apartment hunting trip started out okay but progressively led to despair at the end of the first day- Saturday. The dilemma was that I was given two options: to pick a great apartment with a scary roommate or pick a not-so-decent apartment with a really nice roommate. By the end of the day, I was pretty stressed out that I would never find a good, affordable place with a nice roommate.

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