zimmeauville

4/29/03 ~ 10/13/03

Breed Orange 10.13.04
If you think I'm not in this picture. Look again. Not having a camera in the football game, I thought there would be no proof to show that I was actually in this football game. Well, it turned out that my friend had a digital camera (some photos taken by the d-cam), and almost my entire group of friends were captured in this picture taken by the school athletic department. (All the pictures are in this gallery) The football game is the biggest game of our season: versus our archrival University of Oklahoma (OU).
For some reason there were more OU fans in the fair ground (where Cotton Bowl is located in) than Texas fans. We were consistently surrounded by the red people. Some OU fans weren't very nice. They kept talking trash to us, before and after the game.
If you don't already know, OU sucks.
This football game is the best football game I have ever been to. The atmosphere was ridiculous. Imagine 80,000 people packed into one small stadium. Half of the spectators were wearing crimson red (OU's color), and the other half wearing burnt orange (the right color, also the color of University of Texas). I was of course sitting on the burnt orange side, surrounded by all burnt orange. It was a very up and down game. We had a lot of chances, and a lot of misses. Due to our lack of offensive presence, we lost the game 0-12. The first shutout in about 30 years. It also snapped the longest streak of what used to be most games without a shutout in the country. The result was disappointing, however, the experience was priceless. My school pride was as high as ever.
I wonder what would happen if the result was different. I really want to see the look on the OU fans' faces if they lose. This time we lost in a good fight. We kept it close until the end. Five in a roll is a bit embarrassing, and I have never experienced an OU win during these five years of my college. I will never be able to enjoy the victory over OU as a student. It is one thing that leave bitterness in my college career.

more pictures from the OU game

The Simpsons 7.17.04
I guess everybody knows the Simpsons. They are arguably the most famous family in America. They are also the one of the most valuable American cultural assets. The Simpsons reflects a common malfunction American family. The Springfield neighborhood, in which the Simpsons live in, is a miniature typical American town. The Simpsons television show has been running for 14 seasons, and still going. I could have never imagined how popular it was until I experienced it. There is a new episode of Simpsons every week in the fall. But the show is rerun on a lot of the local fox stations across America. Here in Austin, it is shown twice a day, at 6 and at 10. One night I was eating in a pizza store, one tv at the corner was showing the Simpsons. There were two guys preparing pizza and watching Simpsons at the same time. One of them could follow the dialogs and speak at the same time the characters in the Simpsons were speaking. Wow! He must have seen it many times to be able to follow word by word. In the university, the Simpsons is widely used as tools for teaching. Many pholosophy professors like to lead off a class with a short clip of Simpsons. I don't think there are a lot of philosophical ideas in Simpsons, but I have never taken a philosophy class, and maybe I just don't get them. I'm now taking a music class. One of the assignment is to watch an episode of Simpsons and comment on the music used. There are more examples. In one of my engineering writing class, the professor wanted to know all of her students better. She handed out a questionnaire. One of the questions was "What is your favorite tv show?" Most people answered the Simpsons. One thing really impressed me. Try go on a search engine (like Google or Yahoo) and search for the Simpsons. You can find many websites dedicated to the Simpsons. Many of them has synopsis and list of qoutes of each episode (every single one in all 14 years). These websites have more information about the show than the official website. It is great to watch an episode on tv and go online and read what people have to say about it.

picture: www.thesimpsons.com

South Padre Island 6.1.04
During this little break, I went to South Padre Island for a get-away. Sun and beach have always been my type of vacation. South Padre Island is located at the Southern most tip of Texas. It is known to possess the best beach in the state of Texas. It is the hottest spot for college and high school students in spring breaks. I have wanted to go there for quite some time. It is a hot spot for spring break. I imagined that there are all bars and parties. In fact, it was quite different from what I thought. The island has a few tall buildings. They make the island look like a nicely developed city. Later found out that they are all hotels. From what I read from my research online, there is no resident on the island itself. People who work on the island live on the town Port Isabel opposite to the island, connected in between by a bridge. The island was established in the year of 1960. It has a few things to offer: beach, a water park, water activities. There are really not many things I could do except hanging out on the beach, and I did exactly that. I went to the beach three straight days. the result of that, sunburn. Actually I got sun burnt on the first day. A fine line can be seen on my back between places where sun block was applied and where it was not. I always think that my shoulder and the back of my neck are the only places where sunburn can occur. I was wrong. A nice little nap on the beach directly exposed to sunlight proved that my back and my chest are also vulnerable to sunburn. The picture above was taken before that. My body was still nice and white.

I didn't go to any bars or drinking. There weren't many bars. I guess most people go across the border to further down south to Mexico, where drinking age is 18 (instead of 21 in the US), and everything is cheaper. I could not see a lot of young people on the island. All I encountered are Hispanic (Mexican-American) families. South Padre Island has become a popular place for family vacation for Hispanics who live near by and down in Mexico. I found that English is not the most convenient language to use. Spanish is the main language on the island.

My group set up tent on the beach and we stayed on the beach at night. Some exciting events took place. We planned to cook with the cooking device we brought. But some miscommunication and mishandling caused the disappearance of the devices. We were able to cook on the first day, but ended up eating fastfood the next two days. On the second day we left the tent on the beach unattended trusting no one would take things away. But we made a terrible decision. The main light source, two gas lights, were stolen. We were forced to cut the trip short to avoid staying on the dark beach on more night (the only available light source was moonlight). To get to an empty open space on the beach, we drove the van we rented on the sandy beach. The problem is the wheels of the van can easily get stuck in the sand and the van fails to move. The consequence is that we need to push the van to get the wheels out of the sand trap. Some photos through the link below can explain this.

Here are some more pictures from South Padre Island.

College 5.7.04
I have been complaining about how school has been torturing and how assignments are never ending. But I have yet to share with any of you how, in some ways, I have been enjoying being in school. I realized suddenly today that I have been speaking a lot of English. Probably more than I have ever imagined. The past two weeks have been project weeks. I stuck in CPE (Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building) computer lab for at least six hours everyday and I have never in this two week period left the building for home earlier than 10:00pm. It was either the project, or homework. Of course, all the communication I had with people are all in English. I found out that I have been speaking English non-stop. I came home everyday after 10:00pm and didn't have any interaction with my Hong Kong roommate. I didn't get to speak Cantonese much. My life is now so much involved with English speaking people. I'm a Social Coordinator for Chemical Engineering H Society (link) this semester (and next semester as well). Students need to fulfill certain pledge requirements to become a member of this society. My duty is to organize social events for pledges and members. I got to work with a group of officers of this society. Now I think back, I enjoyed a lot doing this. The responsibility of a Social Coordinator is not too much. It's pretty much to hang out with everybody (including people I don't know at that time, and I would know thereafter). I used to be so afraid of talking to people I don't know. Now I definitely have more confident in myself.

Back to homework. Ever since I don't know when, I have been doing homework with classmates all the time, for all the homeworks. You know that doing homework is sometimes very inefficient. We always get into conversations that we can't get out of. Doing homework normally means talking, and talking can take us a long way. We can always come up with random topics to talk about. The homework assignments are most of the time long and tedious. But always find a way to ease up the tension and stress. It was definitely good times. It reminds me of high school, where I bonded with classmates so well and we spend a lot of time together in school and outside of school. This people in my study group are just like my high school friends. Our former dean of Chemical Engineering once said, (and it's written on a golden plate at the entrance of the CPE) "Students you be friend with are friends for life." Same thing applies to you all YW pals.
The society I mentioned above has a tradition to organize a year-ending party at a professor's residence. This year we went to Dr. Edgar's house. He is teaching me Process Control this semester. I think it is somewhat special being able to go to a professor's house to party. We brought a karaoke machine there. Everybody was shy and no one wanted to sing at first. So I started it off with a "She Bangs" (by William Hung... no, it is Ricky Martin). And I went on to win the singing contest with "Livin' La Vida Loca".
I will have only four classes left, including two classes in fall semester. It will definitely be different from all my previous semesters. I will not be as busy, and definitely spend less time in school. I was reading my school newspaper "The Daily Texan" today. All their writers get to write a column to reflect on their college career and as a columnist for the paper. I feel the same way that they are feeling. I don't have much time left in school. Very soon, probably faster than I think, I will graduate and become part of the working (or unemployment) society. I experienced a lot of tough times in here. But I know that I will miss this place. I will miss the people. I will miss the way of living Wait for me to confirm this in a year's time.

Food 4.29.04
Eating has been quite a problem to me. Let me tell you my monthly expanses. I estimated that I spend about $600 every month. Of course it was excluding tuition. In the $650, $325 goes to rent, $30 goes to utilities, $40 goes to cell phone bill, $40 goes to miscellaneous, and $200 goes to food ($7 per day). Obviously food is the only thing that I can cut back and save. $7 is not much. Consider that an average fastfood meal cost about $4.50. I can tell you that fastfood is my major food source. Cooking at home cost less than $2 per meal. But I don't spend much time at home, and it's quite impossible to cook consistently at home (due both to my schedule and laziness). Sometimes eating out can cost a fortune. A decent restaurant dinner cost $10 on average. A moderate non-fastfood meal cost around $6.50. As you can see, there are dollar signs all over the place. I guess my point is that I don't feel like I'm eating well even when I'm spending money. I'm tired of fastfood, and close to tired of my cooking. Whatever I put into my month, I don't get the satisfactory feeling as when I was at home eating "home" food. Eating has been a chronic problem where there is no way to get it solved. Anyway, I have to eat to survive, and eating is my necessity. Why not eat better? I would not spend wildly on food. But I spend an acceptable (to me) amount of money on food to make myself feel ok. At least I can enjoy my nice meals (not as good as "home" "mommy-cooked" food though) in horrible days. I always think that saving money on food (such as skip meals, wait until I no longer feel hungry; eat crappy food just to fill my stomach up) is unpractical. I need to eat well to keep myself healthy, and I have to eat anyway, why not eat better? (I think I have said it before, let me say it again) I'm spend quite a lot of money on eating, because I think eating is important. I can save money on any other things (cut back on unnecessary expenditure, such as clothing, entertainment, and "home" beautification).

	4/29/03 ~ 10/13/03

	Breed Orange 10.13.04 If you think I'm not in this picture. Look again. Not having a camera in the football game, I thought there would be no proof to show that I was actually in this football game. Well, it turned out that my friend had a digital camera (some photos taken by the d-cam), and almost my entire group of friends were captured in this picture taken by the school athletic department. (All the pictures are in this gallery) The football game is the biggest game of our season: versus our archrival University of Oklahoma (OU). For some reason there were more OU fans in the fair ground (where Cotton Bowl is located in) than Texas fans. We were consistently surrounded by the red people. Some OU fans weren't very nice. They kept talking trash to us, before and after the game. If you don't already know, OU sucks. This football game is the best football game I have ever been to. The atmosphere was ridiculous. Imagine 80,000 people packed into one small stadium. Half of the spectators were wearing crimson red (OU's color), and the other half wearing burnt orange (the right color, also the color of University of Texas). I was of course sitting on the burnt orange side, surrounded by all burnt orange. It was a very up and down game. We had a lot of chances, and a lot of misses. Due to our lack of offensive presence, we lost the game 0-12. The first shutout in about 30 years. It also snapped the longest streak of what used to be most games without a shutout in the country. The result was disappointing, however, the experience was priceless. My school pride was as high as ever. I wonder what would happen if the result was different. I really want to see the look on the OU fans' faces if they lose. This time we lost in a good fight. We kept it close until the end. Five in a roll is a bit embarrassing, and I have never experienced an OU win during these five years of my college. I will never be able to enjoy the victory over OU as a student. It is one thing that leave bitterness in my college career. more pictures from the OU game

	The Simpsons 7.17.04 I guess everybody knows the Simpsons. They are arguably the most famous family in America. They are also the one of the most valuable American cultural assets. The Simpsons reflects a common malfunction American family. The Springfield neighborhood, in which the Simpsons live in, is a miniature typical American town. The Simpsons television show has been running for 14 seasons, and still going. I could have never imagined how popular it was until I experienced it. There is a new episode of Simpsons every week in the fall. But the show is rerun on a lot of the local fox stations across America. Here in Austin, it is shown twice a day, at 6 and at 10. One night I was eating in a pizza store, one tv at the corner was showing the Simpsons. There were two guys preparing pizza and watching Simpsons at the same time. One of them could follow the dialogs and speak at the same time the characters in the Simpsons were speaking. Wow! He must have seen it many times to be able to follow word by word. In the university, the Simpsons is widely used as tools for teaching. Many pholosophy professors like to lead off a class with a short clip of Simpsons. I don't think there are a lot of philosophical ideas in Simpsons, but I have never taken a philosophy class, and maybe I just don't get them. I'm now taking a music class. One of the assignment is to watch an episode of Simpsons and comment on the music used. There are more examples. In one of my engineering writing class, the professor wanted to know all of her students better. She handed out a questionnaire. One of the questions was "What is your favorite tv show?" Most people answered the Simpsons. One thing really impressed me. Try go on a search engine (like Google or Yahoo) and search for the Simpsons. You can find many websites dedicated to the Simpsons. Many of them has synopsis and list of qoutes of each episode (every single one in all 14 years). These websites have more information about the show than the official website. It is great to watch an episode on tv and go online and read what people have to say about it. picture: www.thesimpsons.com

	South Padre Island 6.1.04 During this little break, I went to South Padre Island for a get-away. Sun and beach have always been my type of vacation. South Padre Island is located at the Southern most tip of Texas. It is known to possess the best beach in the state of Texas. It is the hottest spot for college and high school students in spring breaks. I have wanted to go there for quite some time. It is a hot spot for spring break. I imagined that there are all bars and parties. In fact, it was quite different from what I thought. The island has a few tall buildings. They make the island look like a nicely developed city. Later found out that they are all hotels. From what I read from my research online, there is no resident on the island itself. People who work on the island live on the town Port Isabel opposite to the island, connected in between by a bridge. The island was established in the year of 1960. It has a few things to offer: beach, a water park, water activities. There are really not many things I could do except hanging out on the beach, and I did exactly that. I went to the beach three straight days. the result of that, sunburn. Actually I got sun burnt on the first day. A fine line can be seen on my back between places where sun block was applied and where it was not. I always think that my shoulder and the back of my neck are the only places where sunburn can occur. I was wrong. A nice little nap on the beach directly exposed to sunlight proved that my back and my chest are also vulnerable to sunburn. The picture above was taken before that. My body was still nice and white. I didn't go to any bars or drinking. There weren't many bars. I guess most people go across the border to further down south to Mexico, where drinking age is 18 (instead of 21 in the US), and everything is cheaper. I could not see a lot of young people on the island. All I encountered are Hispanic (Mexican-American) families. South Padre Island has become a popular place for family vacation for Hispanics who live near by and down in Mexico. I found that English is not the most convenient language to use. Spanish is the main language on the island. My group set up tent on the beach and we stayed on the beach at night. Some exciting events took place. We planned to cook with the cooking device we brought. But some miscommunication and mishandling caused the disappearance of the devices. We were able to cook on the first day, but ended up eating fastfood the next two days. On the second day we left the tent on the beach unattended trusting no one would take things away. But we made a terrible decision. The main light source, two gas lights, were stolen. We were forced to cut the trip short to avoid staying on the dark beach on more night (the only available light source was moonlight). To get to an empty open space on the beach, we drove the van we rented on the sandy beach. The problem is the wheels of the van can easily get stuck in the sand and the van fails to move. The consequence is that we need to push the van to get the wheels out of the sand trap. Some photos through the link below can explain this. Here are some more pictures from South Padre Island.
	College 5.7.04 I have been complaining about how school has been torturing and how assignments are never ending. But I have yet to share with any of you how, in some ways, I have been enjoying being in school. I realized suddenly today that I have been speaking a lot of English. Probably more than I have ever imagined. The past two weeks have been project weeks. I stuck in CPE (Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building) computer lab for at least six hours everyday and I have never in this two week period left the building for home earlier than 10:00pm. It was either the project, or homework. Of course, all the communication I had with people are all in English. I found out that I have been speaking English non-stop. I came home everyday after 10:00pm and didn't have any interaction with my Hong Kong roommate. I didn't get to speak Cantonese much. My life is now so much involved with English speaking people. I'm a Social Coordinator for Chemical Engineering H Society (link) this semester (and next semester as well). Students need to fulfill certain pledge requirements to become a member of this society. My duty is to organize social events for pledges and members. I got to work with a group of officers of this society. Now I think back, I enjoyed a lot doing this. The responsibility of a Social Coordinator is not too much. It's pretty much to hang out with everybody (including people I don't know at that time, and I would know thereafter). I used to be so afraid of talking to people I don't know. Now I definitely have more confident in myself. Back to homework. Ever since I don't know when, I have been doing homework with classmates all the time, for all the homeworks. You know that doing homework is sometimes very inefficient. We always get into conversations that we can't get out of. Doing homework normally means talking, and talking can take us a long way. We can always come up with random topics to talk about. The homework assignments are most of the time long and tedious. But always find a way to ease up the tension and stress. It was definitely good times. It reminds me of high school, where I bonded with classmates so well and we spend a lot of time together in school and outside of school. This people in my study group are just like my high school friends. Our former dean of Chemical Engineering once said, (and it's written on a golden plate at the entrance of the CPE) "Students you be friend with are friends for life." Same thing applies to you all YW pals. The society I mentioned above has a tradition to organize a year-ending party at a professor's residence. This year we went to Dr. Edgar's house. He is teaching me Process Control this semester. I think it is somewhat special being able to go to a professor's house to party. We brought a karaoke machine there. Everybody was shy and no one wanted to sing at first. So I started it off with a "She Bangs" (by William Hung... no, it is Ricky Martin). And I went on to win the singing contest with "Livin' La Vida Loca". I will have only four classes left, including two classes in fall semester. It will definitely be different from all my previous semesters. I will not be as busy, and definitely spend less time in school. I was reading my school newspaper "The Daily Texan" today. All their writers get to write a column to reflect on their college career and as a columnist for the paper. I feel the same way that they are feeling. I don't have much time left in school. Very soon, probably faster than I think, I will graduate and become part of the working (or unemployment) society. I experienced a lot of tough times in here. But I know that I will miss this place. I will miss the people. I will miss the way of living Wait for me to confirm this in a year's time.

	Food 4.29.04 Eating has been quite a problem to me. Let me tell you my monthly expanses. I estimated that I spend about $600 every month. Of course it was excluding tuition. In the $650, $325 goes to rent, $30 goes to utilities, $40 goes to cell phone bill, $40 goes to miscellaneous, and $200 goes to food ($7 per day). Obviously food is the only thing that I can cut back and save. $7 is not much. Consider that an average fastfood meal cost about $4.50. I can tell you that fastfood is my major food source. Cooking at home cost less than $2 per meal. But I don't spend much time at home, and it's quite impossible to cook consistently at home (due both to my schedule and laziness). Sometimes eating out can cost a fortune. A decent restaurant dinner cost $10 on average. A moderate non-fastfood meal cost around $6.50. As you can see, there are dollar signs all over the place. I guess my point is that I don't feel like I'm eating well even when I'm spending money. I'm tired of fastfood, and close to tired of my cooking. Whatever I put into my month, I don't get the satisfactory feeling as when I was at home eating "home" food. Eating has been a chronic problem where there is no way to get it solved. Anyway, I have to eat to survive, and eating is my necessity. Why not eat better? I would not spend wildly on food. But I spend an acceptable (to me) amount of money on food to make myself feel ok. At least I can enjoy my nice meals (not as good as "home" "mommy-cooked" food though) in horrible days. I always think that saving money on food (such as skip meals, wait until I no longer feel hungry; eat crappy food just to fill my stomach up) is unpractical. I need to eat well to keep myself healthy, and I have to eat anyway, why not eat better? (I think I have said it before, let me say it again) I'm spend quite a lot of money on eating, because I think eating is important. I can save money on any other things (cut back on unnecessary expenditure, such as clothing, entertainment, and "home" beautification).