Secants and Tangents

Today I got the rare opportunity to take a break from my workload and just relax. I got to go to Venice Beach with one of my friends and a bunch of people from his building. I also got to meet his girlfriend for the first time. His friends are awesome, and his girlfriend is really cool. It is weird meeting somebody for the first time, and then seeing her together with a friend. They make a great couple though. He is really lucky. Honestly I am a little jealous, but in a good way of course. I am really happy for him. She reminds me a lot of the girl from my class.

The funniest thing happened too. We were talking about being scared of seagulls shitting on us. The girlfriend was fortunate enough to never have this happen “knock on wood.” No more than a few minutes later, we got into a conversation about jets and all of a sudden I hear a smacking sound followed by a LOUD scream. I assume she was bitten by something in the sand. Nope…I look over and there is a huge puddle of bird shit on her back. Considering the irony of the whole situation, I could not help but laugh.

The waves were huge; I wish I had my board with me. Of course I can only stand up for a few seconds, but who cares? That would have been awesome. Personally I prefer Dockweiller because it is right between the two runways at LAX. A true chance to see jumbo jets as they ascend over the Pacific and part their ways. Unfortunately, most of the 747s veered away from us and headed toward the southerly route around Palos Verdes. The result was that all I could see were the less interesting, but nonetheless powerful 757, 767, 777 and and MD80/90s. But my favorite airliner to see is the 747 (B741/B742 particularly), but my favorite to fly in is the 767 (B763ER).

Later we walked along the Venice waterfront. There were some very interesting people along that walk. The smell of hot dogs and onion rings made me so hungry. Then we went to C and O’s for dinner. We got there thanks to my dad who knows the whole City of L.A. like the back of his hand. Looking around there was also a Cold Stone’s and a smoothie bar. Hell, I could spend the whole day there haha.

Here is where I digress. Lately I have been obsessed with Gwen Stefani’s new album, and the music videos. I need to find a woman like that! Somebody that doesn’t take anybody’s shit, but is still kind. She is a beautiful bully with a heart. Rich Girl is catchy, and can get annoying, but the music video is addicting. Hollaback Girl has great lyrics in some parts, but extremely random in others like:

This shit is bananas,
B-A-N-A-N-A-S

What the hell is that? And the way she treats her Harajuku Girls in the music video for Rich Girl is hilarious. Especially since they look like such dogs. Anyway, the hostess at the restaurant looked like she could be Gwen’s identical twin! She wore a long purple gown-like dress with a tie in the back. She was blonde of course, had thick lips drowned in red lipstick, and had on so much pale makeup, she would make the girl I call the “Diabetic Bitch” (because she is mean and I don’t know her name) look tanned. She wore her hair pinned back, and wore several flowers in her hair. That is a double whammie! My friend teased me as usual haha and offered to take a picture of she and I. He asked her while I stood aside laughing my ass off out of embarrassment. I made him ask for me. She said she gets the “Gwen resemblance” comment often and that she isn’t really a fan, but she would take a picture in a few minutes. Unfortunately, she was extremely busy the rest of our meal. I will have to return to C and O’s haha. Now that is a good friend haha.

The day was full of consequences as well. One of the guys in the group knew a guy that went to my high school. The girlfriend and her friend knew somebody that worked with my dad, and when we returned to campus one of my neighbors was waiting for his girlfriend, whom lives next door to my buddy’s girlfriend. We all took a picture together and then called it a day. What an awesome day! I hope we can do something like that again.

Now back to my Gwen Stefani idolization… actually that’s for another day haha.

Damn my life is hectic this quarter. CS 111 is practically sinking me, but the strange thing is I enjoy it. I guess I should truly be in Computer Science. The book is boring as hell, and the lectures are pretty dull, but occasionally our professor livens things up. It is hilarious to see a man in his 50s run back and forth in a classroom to illustrate how a hard drive seek data operation works. Sadly enough, the mathematician in me kicked back in and made me thing, “Hey, that sounds a lot like convergence of a sequence!” For all epsilon there exists an n >= N such that |a(n) - l| < epsilon. Blah... One thing he said on the first day of class that will stick in my mind is "if you plan on passing this course, this may not be the time to start any new relationships."

Yeah, there is this girl that I like in one of my classes. She has the most contagious laugh. Unfortunately, she is graduating this quarter and will be moving far away. BTW, I am purposely making this as vague as possible…word spreads fast in these parts. There is another girl that I liked in that class, but of course there has to be this guy that is better looking than me that she went for. I had four classes with her in the past and in three of them this dude was an obstacle grrr… Even worse, he is a complete nerd: he takes notes on his damned iBook!

Well, the drama surrounding my timeless departure from the Big Machine has pretty much subsided. The only thing that can possibly be construed as drama was a 3 page email from someone on the staff. The fact that this dude is 24 years old and STILL living in on-campus housing, let alone still at UCLA, is reason enough for his words to have zero credibility. I feel sorry for the guy, he has way too much time on his hands. It is hilarious though, the President of my “soapbox cabinet” is all pissed off. But that’s ok, she is a bitch anyway. She could care less what anybody says or thinks as long as they are not Asian. I purposely made my letter in the previous post a complete bashing, because nobody expects that from me. I also purposely made my “Famous Last Words” email sarcastically smartass…my usual kind of Mad Hatter logic. I pretend to be one with the team, and then BAM, “you all suck.”

My analysis proofs weren’t too bad this week, but of course CS was killer. I have projects due every Friday, quizzes at every lecture, homework, 2 midterms and a final. Friggin A! Of course when I wasn’t worrying about that, I had other stuff to worry about. I ran into a bit of a conflict with someone I consider a good friend this week. As preferring not to “gossip” about a good friend, let me be as vague as possible. We had discussed something that was a pretty big deal for me, but not as big of a deal for him. So when it came to decision making time, he totally forgot about what we had (shortly) discussed. I do not understand how somebody can “forget” something. This has happened to me before with other people, so I don’t doubt at all his honesty, but I honestly do not get how somebody can forget something like this. Now that I think about it, I kind of feel like an ass for the way I treated him…but I am a guy, I can’t really just come out and say what is bothering me. Right? The first day I just acted upset, no big deal. But the next day I turned a more mature version of the silent treatment into an art form. The rest of that day I had a superficial sense of satisfaction, although I knew it wouldn’t last long. After I got home and checked my email - and an apology was waiting for me. I was shocked to say the least. It has been a long time since I have dealt with someone with so much maturity. Also, somebody finally understood what I was actually pissed about! I cannot express how many friends of mine do not understand me or why I react the way I do to certain things. Only a few of my best friends truly know me.

There is nothing wrong with my personality, but being “intense” sucks. If emotion/reaction could be plotted against time you would see that an intense person swings violently back and forth from high to low. Some of the dumbest things make me mad, sad, or happy. Guys are expected to let everything roll off their backs so easily, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t do that. I am getting better at it though. We as guys are also just expected to make problems go away. I can’t do that either. I care too much.

I have never been good at socializing. As much as I like to have fun and hang out with other people I have never been that great at socializing “correctly.” It is like I am incompatible with everyone. I can’t take a hint, and I cannot give one easily. This week was one of those weeks. I guess I am just a mathematician - unless you explicitly prove something, I won’t believe it. I think I now see that this communication quirk probably causes me the most grief of all. On several occasions, my friends have had an extraordinary interest in what I am doing. Someone told me that they were going to get lunch. I kind of got the impression she wanted me to join her, but since she didn’t explicitly invite me, I sent myself on my merry way. Same thing happened this week. A friend basically kept talking about something he is doing this weekend. He ended it with, “if you’re not doing anything…” That should be obvious to me, but since it was Monday, I thought he was just being nice. But it kept coming up…was this perhaps a hint? Get a fucking clue Ryan. So I asked one of my best friends who has known me since forever, and he thought it was an invitation too…of course he got all weird and was all “dude, take the hint and go with it” I finally just had to be blunt with my other friend (and felt like an asshole when I did it) and said, “were/are you inviting me…?” I could tell he was taken aback. I just think he is like that…implicit. I do know that this is how it works. “Hanging out,” unless it is with some exclusive group, never requires a “formal” invitation.

I have come to realize a couple of things, 1) I must be more flexible and go with the flow. I cannot expect everything to go as “scheduled,” 2) I need to listen more, 3) I need to relax. I can never seem to get good social advice from my parents (I inherited my personality from my Mom, so she is no help), so I did the next logical things. I called one of my best buddies. And all he says is, “dude you need to chill out.” But then what he said next really hit me: “you get so worked up over stupid shit that you don’t listen to people.” That gave me quite a bit to think about, in addition to my 17 units of hell.

So I guess it was a productive week in more ways than one. But now I must put on my poker face and pretend that nothing bothers me.

April 8, 2005
Dearest Canyon Point Staff,

I am writing this letter to notify you of my resignation, effective immediately, from the position of Facilities Commissioner for the Canyon Point Residents’ Association. For those of you that have pending facilities requests, I apologize in advance for my inability to serve your needs. Rather than describe why I am making this decision, I feel that it is more important to describe my feelings about my experience with ORL and this team.

After spending a lot of time thinking and reflecting, I feel that my involvement with the Office of Residential Life over the past two years can best be described as a mistake. I have reached the conclusion that I can no longer be involved with an organization that values perfection and that does not respect growth and change in people. Additionally, I refuse to work for a Resident Director that will not acknowledge my superb work earlier in the year.

I feel that the Office of Residential Life, and its constituents needs to take a good, hard look at their behavior and that if the department is truly committed to its role in teaching responsible citizenship and celebrating diversity, it will change its actions. With all of the talk about “celebrating diversity,” I find it ironic and hypocritical that there exist such strong racial as well as other preferences both on the Canyon Point staff as well as throughout the professional branch of the department. The minority to which I belong (i.e. the independent thinkers) are not represented.

Finally, I can no longer function under a bureaucracy that values the pact mentality while demeaning individualism and dissent. That behavior is against my beliefs as a human being and I will not succumb to it regardless of the amount of respect I have lost for making that decision.

I will never forget the positive times that I did have during my experience, but I must do what is best for me. From this point forward, I have an expanded workload to prepare for a change of major in graduate school, from Mathematics to Computer Science. Further involvement with ORL is unhealthy for me, and has served as a large hindrance in my life. I wish each of you the best of luck in all that you do.

Sincerely Yours,
Me