Unsettling

I've been playing a lot more Settlers of Catan lately. For the uninitiated, it's a board game I started playing a few years back, introduced to me by my friend Verde and company. My brother happens to be very good at it, and I don't think I'm terrible either.

The object of the game is to garner 10 points, gained by building structures and other things. The main driving force of the game, however, and its main appeal stems from the trading aspect of it. Players can trade resources with one another, which leads to various peculiar situations involving loyalty and kindness, or lack thereof.

I have thus begun a reputation for being devious and manipulative. In real life, just the other day, I was told that I would not convince Danny with "my words." He used quotations in real life too, which I thought was bizarre.

So what do you think? Do I use my words to manipulate too much?

My Day

Today was arguably the worst day I've had all semester, yet for some reason, I felt a (probably false) sense of contentedness and joy. I spent most of today, as I latterly do, alone.

I went to sleep at a late hour, greeting the sun at its early yawn before I tucked myself into the comforts of my static electricity-infested Asian mink blanket.

I then woke up for my 8AM class.

Normally, my friend, Naman Desai, wakes up around 7:30. He doesn't look at the clock in the early hours of the morn, but rather, simply times himself. By the time he finishes his morning routine, he has a few minutes before he has to leave for class. Thus, if he finishes his routine and doesn't see his friends up, he calls them to make sure they go to class. Good friend, good intentions.

But Craig Jeong (or Jeongward as we call him these days), who is Naman's roommate, decides to set his alarm for 7AM this morning instead of the customary 7:30AM. Thus, Naman does his morning routine and wakes me up when he finishes...at 7:20AM.

My alarm goes off at 7:35AM, so when Naman called, it was 15 minutes early. For some reason, in my groggy stupor, I just said, "Alright. I'm getting up." I looked at my clock, but it didn't register to me as being too early. When Naman calls me, I'm usually late, so I think I just took it all in stride and got ready.

And I finished at 7:30AM, 5 minutes before my alarm would even go off.

Needless to say, when I had realized what happened, I was pissed that I lost sleep. However, that anger was quickly replaced by my plan to sleep straight through my Anatomy lecture unnoticed. The class is fairly large, so I knew from prior experience that I could sleep as long as I blended in with the other students.

Unfortunately, all my plans went askew as class began.

Dr. Anderson had a bone to pick with us. It wasn't quite the same bone Shenzi picked with Scar, but it was similar. He was mad that many people were whining about one question on the last quiz. This question was worth 2 points. In a course with 1400 points, this was fairly negligible. However, not only was he angry about the very vocal minority who whined to him, his anger was increased tenfold when he heard complaints of the question being "unfair."

Now, Dr. Anderson has his ups and downs (ask Eric Woo), but he has also given us 2 free points on every quiz. A quiz that has 15 questions usually contains a bogus question, so as to ease our anxieties about our grade, or simply because he's nice. I don't know his reason, but I don't question it.

Dr. Anderson argued that if he took that question out of the last quiz, then he should take all the "free" questions out of the other quizzes in order to be "fair." This was obviously met with criticism, and thus, Dr. Anderson asked for our input, challenging us to find a compelling reason for him not to take away the points.

One person said that the syllabus already established the point total, so it would be inconvenient at best to change it this late in the semester. Dr. Anderson countered by pointing out that the first thing in the syllabus says, "I reserve the right to change anything." He calls it his "God clause."

Dr. Anderson thus says that he's allowed to give and take points as he pleases.

The good Doctor giveth, and the good Doctor taketh away. That's God, Ph. D., for you, folks.

I voiced my opinion, convincing him that the students do realize that he is the God of the lecture hall, and that's why sometimes we complain, because we know he has that power. That's why we go to class, our biweekly church, to show him our attendance rate, because we know he controls the fate of our grade. That's why we go to his office hours, our Holy Days of obligation, to show that we care about the class, and we love Anatomy, our academic religion. But in the end, the good Doctor giveth, and He can certainly taketh away.

However, my anger did not stem from the arbitrary nature of his points. I could care less. Just work hard and make him laugh, and you'll be fine, I say. My anger stems from the fact that right after I spoke, voicing my opinions, offering my prayers to the good Doctor Himself, he took mental note of me. That means he noticed me. That means that I couldn't go unnoticed. That means that I couldn't sleep.

I was frustrated, but this quickly subsided because I had hours before my next class to sleep. So I got back to my room after Anatomy with the intention of sleeping until my next class. As I set my alarm, I hear the loud rumble, similar to a leaf blower. I look outside and on the building adjacent to mine, they were fixing the roof with a random machine. A loud machine. I told Stephanie this already, but it sounded like the gargling of a lion with lung cancer. Or a dragon. Why do you need a dragon to fix the roof?!

Again, for the third time, now, I was vexed nearing my limit. So I closed my roommate's window, and texted him to inform him. That's when I found out my phone had been disconnected because I forgot to pay yesterday.

My anger was calm, even though it was the fourth transgression upon me in a very early day. It was easy to pay. I just needed to do it online, like I do every month, and in an hour or so, probably when I wake up, I'll have service again. So I go online. It normally goes smoothly, but this time the card number was rejected.

Five times this morning was I subject to ill-will. Five small, but still irksome, annoyances greeted me.

Any other day, I would have been angry beyond measurement. But I felt okay for some reason. I wasn't pissed, but just felt like sleep would make it okay. I didn't have time to be angry because I had to study for my Lab Practical. I calmed myself, and took a quick nap. Realizing that I lost sleep in the morning, during lecture, and before noon because of the loudness, realizing that my phone was dead, my (dad's) card number rejected, thus freezing my telephone capabilities for the rest of the day, realizing that I was having a horrid day, I was still okay.

Then I got a text message from Sean, and I realized that while my phone was dead, I could still receive but not send text messages.


And I was fucking livid.

More School

I know it's not quite as late as I normally post, but I thought I'd be better off dedicating the rest of my night/morning to the age-old habit of studying. As old as time itself, pulling all-nighters has been a tradition of college students globally. Who am I to break and challenge tradition?

Tonight I feel obligated to relate a story. In lieu of my friend Travis leaving next semester, I thought I'd mention him before year's end. He came in my room today, accompanied by the ever-hilarious Craig Jeong (strangely not of Korean descent, but that's another story for another late night).

We swapped stories about fights and what-not. Charles relayed some hilarious ones about how he cried in the fifth grade. It has been awhile since I have personally been involved in a fight. Surprisingly, I haven't gone fist-to-fist with anyone here yet.

The closest I've been to a fight, as I told it to my four friends, was when I was at a house party a few months ago.

It was a rather large party, probably a bit over a hundred people there. Some people were intoxicated, and I'll refrain from revealing my own physical condition simply because I don't want to get too personal on such a public forum.

Anyways, people were intoxicated. As such, people got boisterous. As a matter of fact, there were multiple very loud people, many of which were Lakers' fans. Being from the Bay Area, I am naturally a Golden State Warriors fan. Inevitably, our love for our respective basketball teams clashed. It was an interestingly heated exchange, my one to their multitude.

So I was exchanging insults with a crowd of Lakers' fans, among them my roommate, Danny. One of these Lakers' fans had a friend named Steve, who was not a fan himself, but rather, was friends with the general crowd of raucous malcontents. While this exchange was happening, and it was happening rather chaotically, Danny was yelling at me, defending the honor of the beloved Los Angeles Lakers.

"Andrew!" he joked out loud. "Wanna take this outside? HUH? HUH?!"

I obviously had no desire to leave the premises of the party in order to engage in violent combat with a person from whom I slept six feet away every night. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to fight either.

However, neither of our opinions were shared by Steve, who quickly grabbed my collar and brought me close to his face. Now, Steve is not a very tall man, but nor was he lacking in strength. As a matter of fact, with that grab, I fully began to appreciate the bulk of his muscles. His biceps were roughly equivalent in size to a newborn rhinocerous, or a rhino calf (though I like Yahoo! user Nemo's answer best).

So he brought me close to him and said to me, "Hey. You better cool it. Your friend says he wants to take this outside. We can go outside if you want."

So yes, Danny almost got my ass kicked. I repeat, Danny almost got my ass kicked.

I'll let the reader decide whether Danny was drunk or not.