So I continued my streak of late-night antics last night/this morning. Instead of playing endless hours of Word Challenge, I played endless hours of mafia. Not only that, but I treated this year's freshmen with a dose of snaps and Robin's 9 card game.

Robin's game is really good, actually. It had me for a while, but the second he did it yesterday, I figured it out. It was made much more enjoyable when the freshmen could NOT figure ANYTHING out. Especially snaps. Ohhhh man, were they stubborn.

We played mafia until a quarter before 6AM. You'd think that it would be time for me to sleep, right?

Well, yeah. Right. I went back to my room and headed straight to bed. However, upon laying in my bed, I realized something was amiss: I had no fu----' sheets. My laundry was still down in the basement.

Needless to say, I was too lazy to get it. So I went down, dried the load with my bedsheets and left the rest of my clothes in the dryer.

Then I rested my poor, heavy soul.

And woke up at 6:30PM today.

If it weren't for my two upcoming tests, this would have been one of the best weekends ever.

Instead, this has become one of those weekends that I ask myself many weeks later: What the fuck was I thinking?

A Weekend's Rest

Yesterday, Saturday, I told my parents I studied a significant amount.

In fact, I only studied a maximum of 30mins, effectively. Not only that, I studied material that was not going to be on my upcoming test.

But I did get to hang out with Nicole and Tiffanie.

I don't know which part of my weekend was more depressing: My brother getting his license to drive, which is ironically synonymous with his license to kill, or the fact that before I spent a wonderful hour at Romeo's house, I stopped by a high school party.

In both cases, I realized how strange it felt to be in my second year removed from high school. The party was a post-homecoming party for Milpitas High School children, and featured a strobe-light (or stroboscopic lamp, see def. 2a), a day care room, and too many college students.

Needless to say, I was more than happy to leave the strange setting, where I once would have thrived (probably not, actually. I still would have stood there awkwardly in high school as I did last night.) I felt like a creeper, standing there with my creeper buddy, Nicole, watching high school kids danced. Hell, I creeped myself out to the point where I turned over to Nicole and said, "We gotta leave. This party has too many creepy guys staring at the kids dancing. I'm getting too comfortable with similar company."

Then it was karaoke. By karaoke, I mean Tiffanie and Romeo singing while a group of azn thugz 4 lyfe played Tien Len. And yes, I include myself in that category.

But probably the most disturbingly hilarious part of my weekend was learning that my brother had recently been given permission from the government to drive around, granted his passengers are over a certain age and carry a license as well. He is of course not legally to drive anyone younger than 25 with or without a license.

Knowing this, he drove legally to a birthday bash alone, only to drive 4-5 of his cronies home illegally. He just wanted to be nice, which is something I would have done.

We're rebel with causes.

Eye Arr knee!

What I have is not insomnia.

What I have is much simpler, and probably much more indicative of my personality than a chronic disorder would say about me.

I don't sleep at night because my habits are, quite frankly, erratic. I sometimes sleep during the day, thus screwing myself come bedtime. I pull the occasional all-nighter because of my procrastinating nature, and my inability to establish a healthy lifestyle has more than once put me at odds with others around me.

But I couldn't sleep, and I was told that if you lay in bed for more than 15 minutes without meeting the sandman then you are wasting your time. The advice given me was to get up and do something for a bit and then proceed to search for death's cousin anew. So, here I am blogging about my sad inabilty to find rest.

I hate sleeping. I don't hate it in the sense that it is not enjoyable, but rather, I hate the fact that our bodies need rest. If I were constantly awake, not needing rest, my life would be much more focused, and my habits would be healthier. It's like money. If money didn't corrupt, people wouldn't hate it. The problem with money is that people need it, and when there is a need for something, it usually becomes the root of some evil.

Sleep is the root of my evil. Today, I was talking to my Genetics lab TA and research leader, Raquie, and found that I was not the only insane person around. I was finishing up a drug assay today when I heard her characteristic laugh. It's kind of a fake-sounding laugh, but at the same time a genuinely jolly one. Regardless, I hear her distinct laughter and head into the main part of the lab (I was in the hood room). Surprisingly, she was holding a Red Bull energy drank.

Now, Red Bull, as most of you are well aware, is a drank for energy. Raquie was holding the Sugar-free kind, which is okay, except it was in the 16 fl. oz. variety. This was intriguing to me in particular because I had always thought Raquie as a hard working leader, and to a very significant extent, she is. I kinda look up to her, since she is my research leader, even though she's like five-foot-nothing.

Anyways, we get to talking about her most recent all-nighter (last night), and she was explaining to another member of the research team about how she pulls all-nighters, then gets really tired the next day. So how does she compensate for her tiredness?

Yep, she pulls another all nighter.

This got me thinking. But not for too long because I was hungry and had to get some lunch with Ronak.

Lunch was as uneventful as always, with the typical chicken pesto pasta with garlic and some sushi on the side. Actually, excitingly enough, today's pasta was rather plain and lacking flavor. I was seriously about to complain about the state of Pacific's food, with a piece of sushi filling my mouth, when President DeRosa walked into the dining hall, dressed as formally as any president of a school should.

I kind of looked at him and, unintentionally, we made eye contact. I cannot state how awkward it is when you're walking or standing somewhere with someone walking pass, and you make eye contact but do not greet them. Sometimes it's because you don't know them, and sometimes it's because you've met them but do not know them well enough to greet them. Or sometimes you do greet them even though you don't usually greet them, therefore setting up for countless more awkward moments when you see them and don't greet them or do greet them or make eye contact or don't make eye contact.

It's awkward.

But anyways, president DeRosa and I (pun unintended) make eye contact. Being the big man on campus, and undoubtedly wanting to hold up the veneer of a nice, down-to-earth guy in front of his posse, he came over to me and patted me on the back. Naturally, with sushi in my mouth, I wouldn't have been able to respond, so it befell on Ronak to respond for me.

"How's the pasta?" he asked, patting me on the shoulders as he walked by.

"It's good," replied Ronak.

And that was that.

Except Ronak didn't have pasta on his plate. He had a burrito.

I can only imagine DeRosa's reaction to the Indian boy eating a burrito commenting/lying about the quality of the pasta when the question wasn't even directed at him.

I almost spit out my sushi laughing.

Homage

The stairs creaked as the little boy sneaked down, waiting for a glimpse, a mere hint of the bowl full of jelly that would signify Christmas, and, more importantly, presents. Daintily, he snuck, more cautious than a fly in a crowded kitchen. For the last two years, Santa had evaded his requests to meet in person, to come face-to-face with the boy who was most certainly his biggest fan. His parents would smile naively, in his mind, trying to convince him that Santa was busy, and that all the children in the world needed their presents before Santa could rest.

But the boy knew that Santa was the best at his job. He could spare a few insignificant minutes to make significance in one boy's life. The boy was thus adamant about Santa's presence on Christmas, and it was on this eventful night that the boy was determined to glimpse at his hero.

And so he crept, ever so slightly, at least in his mind, down the wooden stairs. It was strange, really. All the stairs of his friends' houses weren't wooden. They were carpeted or tiled or surfaced with some form of slick linoleum. He didn't think his stairs should be the only ones that creaked and moaned with the light footsteps of a child, but they did.

But this was no time for petty thought. This was a time of urgency and focus. The boy would meet Santa, if only for a few sparse moments. Thus was the unyielding mindset of a toddler.

The boy, however, was shocked to his panjama-covered toes when he reached the family room. To his utter dismay, the couch was occupied not by his jolly idol, but rather, by his parents. They had all been in the living room earlier that night, his parents and his older sister and himself, to listen to his father read Christmas tales. They were wonderful, of course, stimulating the imagination and whisking away the boy to Yuletide adventures, but they had their time. This was not the time for his parents to be in the family room, keeping warm by the fireplace.

This was everyone's bedtime, and his time to meet Santa. What right did his parents have to tell him to sleep while they stayed up to do whatever it is grown-ups do in front of a fireplace? What right did they have to put him to bed, telling him that Santa would be coming to deliver him a present in the morning when they themselves were not sleeping? What right did his father have to smile at him when he asked these question?

Then, it struck the boy like a lightning bolt strikes a vane: They were up to see Santa too!

"Go back to your room, son. Santa isn't here yet," his father tried to convince him. The boy would not move.

"How come you get to stay up to see Santa?" he asked, undeterred by his father's insistence.

But father was not in the mood to convince him. Mother, always patient, spoke before father made his always-unflattering demands. She smiled as if the boy had said something funny.

"You can stay, sweetie. As long as you keep quiet. You can sleep here with mommy."

The boy thought about it for a moment, but quickly realized that the compromise was a much better alternative to sleeping in his room, where he would surely miss Santa.

And so, his father got off the couch where he was snuggling with his wife to make room for the boy. The toddler laid in his mother's warm arms while his father sat on the armchair, unmoving but smiling quietly.

And of course it did not take long for the child to fall asleep.

But he did not regret it, for the snowy sunrise brought the boy a new present waiting in the stocking. Santa had come and delivered as promised. Before he checked the stocking, however, he paused.

He hadn't seen Santa because he was sleeping. His mother was still in the same position she was when he had fallen asleep, except now draped with a blanket his father surely had provided. She remained in slumber. His father was already up and about, making coffee and checking his email. His older sister came running down the stairs, nearly tripping as she did so. She opened her present before the boy did, and she was delighted. So was he, and he forgot about his goal for the night before.

His mother woke up from the delighted giggles of his sister, and his father joined the family around the fireplace. Upon the boy's inquiries about Santa's visit, his father just smiled and handed him another present to unwrap, easily averting any thought of Santa.

His mother and father shared another knowing smile.

To the boy, Santa didn't matter anymore. He was only a part of Christmas, now. The presents had to be unwrapped. Breakfast had to be served. His family had to be together. The snow had to fall, and Christmas traditions still had yet to be carried out.

Plus, he could always try again next Christmas. At least, if Santa still existed then.

Per Diem

My final is approximately five and a half hours on top of a day in front of me.

I am not ready.

I'm tired of organic chemistry and the endless amounts of sadness the subject brings to me.

I guess the only thing to do now, other than the necessary studying, is to blog about the Olympics.

I find it disgusting that NBC, its affiliates and the mainstream media in general all love to milk or create Olympic stories of triumph. It's not that I, born and raised under the red, white and blue, don't enjoy a good underdog story as much as the next American. Hell, we were founded by underdogs, and my ancestral roots find themselves in the most generic of American underdog refugee stories. My family and my history bleeds underdog. So no, I'm not quite anti-American. It's not that I don't enjoy these stories. It's just that we are shifting our attention too much on the sweet triumphs of our athletes when the Olympic games should be about the unity of all countries.

Is it really necessary to have a Medal Count on the front page of Yahoo!? Why are we so preoccupied with the numbers, counting our way to superiority? We may have more medals than any other country right now, but what does it matter? A bit of national pride, yes, but I get the feeling that all this medal counting and Americans-as-the-underdog storytelling is just setting us apart from the rest of the world. We are in no way the underdogs. Americans are brimming with athleticism and dominance. Our economy allows us to be.

Most other countries don't have enough food to feed their people. How can they be expected to dominate as wholly as we have? Plus, China has WAY more gold medals than we do. So no, we are no longer the best, nor, I suspect, shall we be the best any time soon in the Summer Olympics.

Americans make everything about winning. These awards are supposed to show how diverse the athletic world can be, with many countries winning various medals. We aren't SUPPOSED to win gold in everything. We aren't SUPPOSED to be competing ONLY with the Chinese communist bastards. We need to back down from this idea that we are the big dogs, especially since we're competing in THEIR homeland.

That being said, Shawn Johnson is the cutest being to grace the earth since Togepi hatched.

On another, equally important note. The South Ossetians want OUT of Georgia, but do they want IN to Russia? Russia's just as bad as we are in terms of asserting dominance. In fact, they are exactly as bad as we are.

1. America went over to Iraq to "spread and establish democracy" as we do periodically, to our economic favor. Under democracy's guise, we went over and toppled a probably bad regime. Russia claims it is doing something along those lines. They claim they want justice for the South Ossetian people. However, what Russia really wants is to reclaim its international dominance, its pride in being a world power. They are saying that they won't take shit from Georgia, the lowliest of former provinces, who, by the way, tried to assert ITS dominance onto a de facto state.

Actually South Ossetia, which is technically a province of Georgia on the Russian border along the Caucasus, governs itself, along with huge monetary aid from its Russian sugar daddy. It isn't internationally recognized as an independent nation, but it sure as hell acts as one, hence "de facto." Georgia recently tried to take it back, and Russia said, "No-no. Bad girl. Don't pick on little South Ossetia. We have to roll in with our tanks now to do some "peacekeeping."" To which America said, "No-no. Bad boy. Don't pick on little Georgia. We're gonna nuke you if you come near that oil line."

Ah, war. <3

2. What Russia did had equal severity as America's War on Terror in Iraq. We have more power, so we can wage war across continents. Russia could too, but they did the equivalent of a war abroad. They went across the border to assert their power. This is the same as California rolling tanks into Baja California and saying, "It has the name "California" in it, so it's ours!"

Yeah, California is the shit, but we're just happy to be part of America. Likewise, Russia should just be happy to be part of a world where peace is still possible. The world's gotta stay united, as these Olympic games remind us, as we face the problems of the future. Namely, I'm scared of the return of the dinosaurs. If we aren't united when they arrive, how will we stave them off? They have hella T-Rexes! And we only have Christian Bale to save us!

Lordy, I'm tired.

Best comment gets a prize.