Last night, we went out to the Blind Pig, for a party that Komposit was throwing. We wanted to get there really early to avoid any lines so the plan was to leave around ten thirty. Surprisingly, the plan pretty much worked out and we left close to eleven and got into the club with no hassles. I have to say that i wish New York clubs could just be like tonight's experience. Five dollars cover, good music and people dancing everywhere. Right after we got in, the line got really long and they stopped letting people in (which sucked because some of our friends didn't get through) but besides that the whole night was pretty good. It was crazy crazy hot inside though. Everybody was glittering from the sweat and after a few hours, i just couldn't stand it inside anymore so i had to make periodic trips outside to chill out.



After Blind Pig, a ton of us went to Pizza House and sat at this huge long table for twenty. All the girls on the right, all the guys on the left. Don't know how that worked out but it was amusing. Met these two kids, Dan and John, who transferred in this year from New York and they came to eat with us so that was cool. Suj's roommate, Chad, was also out with us the whole night and he was really cool. He had a very long and princely name but i forgot what it was...something like "Christopher Thomas Andrew Edwardian" or something like that. Everybody wished me happy birthday and even sang real quick when i exited the bathroom so thanks to all those people. Birthdays come and go and really, i wish they could just shoot by...i don't really like it being "my birthday." But it's nice all the same.



After a few games of Mafia at Jill and Palak's, we all crashed and went to bed. Oh, we also played two rounds of Taboo. I was horrible for some strange reason and kept on saying all the taboo words. Normally i'm really good, i swear. Suj is the man though. He makes the weirdest out-of-left field guesses and gets them right. From now on it's Sujeet "Croquet" Rao.

funKtion performed today on the Diag at Festifall. They got a lot of love and i was impressed with the way they pulled together a routine so quickly (they did it in about a week). Dancing has gone to another level here...the other day for the Filipino basketball tournament, Anna said they performed after only four practices and funKtion pretty much put on a performance with the same amount of practice. Personally, while it's good to have fresh and new stuff all the time, i felt like they weren't as clean as they should of been. They were hilarious though, PZ was ripping it and everyone was having fun. With the whole dancing thing, i always felt like pieces shouldn't be done unless they were as tight as they possibly could be...but then again, i always messed up anyhow so who am i to speak. Either way, dancing is getting a lot of love on campus so that is cool.



Spent most of the afternoon at Festifall, hanging out at the funKtion and Dance 2XS tables. Dance 2XS had like nine pages of sign ups and people were waiting around the booth to sign up so that was pretty hot. funKtion got it's fair share of people too and a lot of them stopped to check out the pictures and to ask questions and stuff. Stopped by the Huaren table too to meet some of the new Core but i didn't really get a feel for what's going on there. I hear they might be not doing the fashion show which is a tad disappointing to me but hey, life goes on. I used to hate doing stuff like Festifall and talking to random people but i've pretty much learned to just care less and have fun with it and i actually find it fun to just spew out random pointless drivel to the people walking by. I've got this "turn on, turn off" outgoing stuff down i think.

Today was Godaiko day. Every Wednesday is two for one on spider rolls (soft shelled crab) and me and Hong used to go all the time and load up. You can't take any of the food out so you have to be careful and not over order because then you'll be wasting money. I think i've had some of my most enjoyable (yet repulsively full) eating experiences at Godaiko's. Me, Hong and Louis went once on spicy tuna night and ordered up some insane amount of those and ate until we just couldn't stuff any more down our throats.



Anyhow, we went with a lot of people (Greg, Caroline, Kyle, Rollen, Julia, Sher Wing, Lisa, Andri) and got a good smattering of spider rolls. Julia didn't quite finish hers but everyone else cleaned their plates. They jacked up the prices of the spider rolls though so now they're almost nine dollars. Me, Rollen and Kyle split four orders (doubled so that means 40 pieces) so now you can use that as a barometer of how much you want to order next Wednesday.



Other than food, today was pretty uneventful...a quick spin with the football at the Diag, a little bit of ice cream at Stucci's, helped Julia with her boxes, a quick game of Mafia. Um, i forgot one thing. Somehow, Babbs managed to borrow a hookah and so i went down to South Quad to get in on some. Hookah is basically a bong that you smoke flavored tobacco out of (he had some grape stuff). It's an amazingly relaxing and chilling experience. I love just sitting there and smoking it because it smells so damn good and it puts you in a good mood and it induces conversation.



Read these two papers by this kid Chris who is friends with Babbs. This kid is a sophmore and runs track here at U of M. He is half Filipino and half Chinese i think. Anyhow, his writing is astounding. His ideas and his delivery and the way he structures his sentences are amazing. If i could write like that, i would go immediately into writing as a profession. He strings out his messages with a story that just grabs you. His command of the English language is stunning. It's sick. His pieces basically had to do with race and finding his identity but he brought those ideas into essays about movies and his mom making food. Great stuff.

Today i woke up and ran off immediately to ball with Jae. So basically, i balled at five o'clock. I woke up at Palak's and Jill's all confused because with their shades drawn i couldn't tell what time it was and their other roommate and a friend were at the table so i was just like, "whoa, what's going on here." Luckily i re-orientated myself and said my "thank you's" and "good-bye's" and left. I was supposed to get Crunchers or Colliders or something like that (whatever it was it was supposed to be like a Flurry) with Maristella and Kyle but the line was too long so we just went to go sit on top of Rendezvous. I think that's one of my favorite places to be actually, sitting on top of Rendezvous with a few people, cigarettes and coffee in hand. I forgot what we talked about but it had something to do with Senior Ditch Day and high school pranks or something.



Sher Wing and Lisa came back late last night so we bounced over there to check out their place and talked for awhile. Jason Chan ended up being there and that was cool even though it was totally unexpected. I was like, "What the heck are YOU doing here?!?" And he was like, "What are YOU doing here?" Ah, the black hole that is Ann Arbor. Oh, Sher Wing said that Brian was trying out for some part in a movie and that he was gonna be a seat-filler for the VMAs on Thursday. I'm not sure where he's getting these gigs but he's blowing up and hopefully something big will happen for him.



I finally had my first visit to Pizza House since i've been back. I went with Michelle and we sat in the new outdoor veranda or whatever. It's nice because the windows are open and you can smoke in there. Pizza House has gone from this little shitty hole in the wall my freshman year to the premier spot to eat on campus. Fries dipped in barbeque and ranch (in that specific order) and chicken tenders in honey mustard are heavenly.

I need to stop and mention the highlight of my Mafia career which occured last night after visiting Gus's place. We had been trying to put together a Mafia game forever and it finally happened at South Quad. There was a huge number of people there, consisting mostly of dance people and old and new Resident Advisors. We didn't really know too many of the RAs but we had heard that they played a lot of Mafia. Overall the night was incredibly fun because i hadn't played Mafia with so many new people in a long time. A lot of them were hilarious and loud and watching Sam do his stuff was funny as hell.



The best though was the second to last game. From the get-go, Sam and Babbs were at each other's throats and people were yelling and screaming and nothing made any sense at all. Near the end, we Mafia were sitting pretty and i was sure we were going to win the game. We were playing with four Mafia and one Kaiser Soze (like a Psycho Killer who can't be detected by cops) for the twenty of us. During the second to last kill round, PZ was killed and i thought that me and Darryl were the only Mafia left. As it turned out, Palak was Kaiser and she had killed PZ too so i was thrown off into thinking that Kaiser was dead. Anyway, the point is that at the end it was just me and Palak left and we both won, even though she was Kaiser and i was just a regular old Mafioso. The great thing was that we didn't even really know we were both evil until the end and that we were both using each other. Yes, it's just a game but Mafia is the greatest entertainment in the world and the best way to see the sunrise on a consistent basis.

The last few days here have been a swirl of wandering around and doing nothing. The campus is pretty dead and quiet because classes haven't really started. Everyone is in the process of moving in and cleaning up so i've been to Meijer's a couple of times and sat around as people cleaned and complained. People are not happy school is starting. I think everyone is happy that people are back but nobody is excited about the coming year, due to academic and social anxieties. It's been a little weird here without the Wilmot Girls because i'm so used to just cruising over to their place to hang out when i have nothing to do. But at the same time it's cool because i get to hang out with alot of people i haven't ever hung out with.



On Sunday we went to this Filipino basketball tournament to watch Anna, Gus, Steve and some other people dance at halftime. We were there for a long time watching a few of the games (which were sort of exciting but at the same time not really) before they actually went on. They were well received but right afterwards some idiot ran out and mocked the entertainment by doing one armed pushups and basically being a complete idiot (i use idiot twice because that's how strongly i feel about his idiot-ness). The worst is that the crowd loved it. Personally, i thought it was....yes.....idiotic. After the tournament, most of the funKtion guys went to TGIF for dinner and then we proceeded to sit around at Staples Center with Rollen until we ended the night with Pizza House whereupon we talked about the role of a significant other...which basically broke down to that people only want a boyfriend/girlfriend so that they will always have a warm body to do something with in times of boredom.



I woke up Monday at four o'clock and then panicked because my phone ran out of batteries and i had left my bag in Anna's car. I had to go on the hunt for a Nokia charger and finally found one at Helen's. As my lifeline was charging, i went with her and Michelle to Best Buy to buy some Dreamcast games for Helen. Girls who play video games....big plus. It was Greg and Caroline's two year anniversary on that day (the 2nd) so congrats to them. After that, me and Babbs drove out to Gus's house to check out his home made studio. It took awhile to get there but once there, we were stunned with his place. Gus has built an amazing "bomb shelter" in his basement. He has a mini dance floor (compete with mirrors) in the middle of his room, bookended by a studio on one side and a bed on the other. Basically, he showed us how some of the equipment worked and then Babbs went into the sound booth to track down some of his poetry. We were only there for maybe two hours but it was cool to watch Gus and Babbs working and creating something. We left with a three track CD of some of Babbs stuff. I am continually astounded by the amount of information Gus knows about everything. It's sick.

I'm back at Michigan...after a grueling twelve hour drive through the rain. Actually, i can't lie and say that it was grueling. I didn't even drive because i can't drive stick and neither could Sam so basically Kyle had to drive the whole way. He was dead tired much of the way and between that and the rain, we stopped alot. Lynn attempted to take over for Kyle but after one block the engine went wacko and we had to pull over so that Kyle could reclaim the reins to his baby. I fell asleep at one point and woke up to the sounds of thundering rain pouring down and watched Kyle as he navigated with about two feet of vision in from of him. The point is, i got here.



Last night i basically just ran around seeing some people on campus, checking out their places and watching them unpack (or pretend to unpack). Michelle got me this silly (but orange) hat from Taiwan that is basically a brimless baseball hat. Needless to say, i can't really wear it because i look incredibly stupid in it. Kyle looks pretty good in it though, with his bangs hanging out, so maybe he'll wear it. Kyle's place is a dump. The bathroom is scary, the place is dirty and his subletter's didn't exactly do a good job with the maintenance and upkeep. He's pretty upset about it and i think he's gonna kill somebody but we'll see what happens. Because his apartment has no human amenities (although it seems like the bugs like it alot), we had to look for alternative housing. I ended up spending the night at Palak and Jill's place (on Packard and State) which is really nice and roomy. We didnt' actually sleep much because i ended up talking all night with them about all sorts of random things. Interesting to say the least but fun as hell.



I woke up this morning after about two hours of sleep and went to play basketball. Hong had to be initiated into the world of full court basketball but after one game, i was dying. Actually, after two trips up and down the court i was dying. Between the lack of sleep and my lack of exercise and my abundance of cigarettes, i was wheezing and on the verge of collapse. Needless to say, i played like crap and we left after one game. I suppose i'll have to build on that over the next week. I was desperately seeking shelter right after basketball so i could shower and nap but everyone was gone and going back to Kyle's place wouldn't work because he had no shower curtain. To put a capper on it, i'm clean now and about to hunt down someplace nice and clean smelling to nap.



Oh, i don't want to forget that we visited Alvin's condo on Friday night. A few months ago, he purchased a condo in Ann Arbor and it's an amazing place and congratulations to Alvin.