July 16, 2002

Well, what a day. I woke up at 10 and went straight to the television room. Eventually I figured I had to do something or else have this nasty superego nagging at me. So I took Nicole to campus and went to Berkeley Art Museum to look for a job.

It's surprisingly calming when you enter its gates; the solid cement building feels like a boulder mountain rising from the ground. Well, at least that's how I was feeling about it today, since it was sunny. When it's raining, it might be: "UGH! UGH-ly." I suppose being around these buildings longer makes me feel better about them. They're more friendly ... but, the girl at the desk told me the hiring guy wasn't in, and come back tomorrow even though you probably won't have any luck since you aren't work-study. Great.

So I left the oasis of BAM and walked to the HFA (Hearst Film Annex), building B, to talk to Sheila, the CED advisor. The girl working at the reception desk was annoying as hell (typical for Berkeley reception people, except for Tang Center people whose kind actions actually betray their nasty tone): "What do you need to talk to her about?" she snarls, like a troll guarding her bridge. "Classes." I reply, "is that OKAY??" (Please join in my contempt towards the campus personnel). I finally get to speak to Sheila, but only while she is walking away from her desk because she wants to take a break. I find out from her that if I get into the college (I'm transferring from Letters and Science to Environmental Design) I can take Arch 100A in the spring, which means I won't be behind a year. YAY! I would just dread having to take another year of school. Wouldn't you?

Next, I ran into Bruce as I was heading back to Underhill parking lot. We ended up at Crepes a-Go-go (I'm not sure how to capitalize that name) on University. It was a heavy chicken crepe doused in an oily sauce and wrapped in a crispy crepe; the weird thing was that because it was wrapped in foil, it was almost exactly like eating a burrito. Minus the mushy beans and sour cream. I just wished the vegetables weren't so soggy. But, the best part of the meal came at the end, when we had the gelato. It was a scoop of Stracciatella and of Croccantino, which is essentially gelato-speak for "Cookies N' Cream" and "Rocky Road." Yum! But I thought it was too cold (when did I start having an aversion to cold desserts?), so Bruce ate most of it. We walked over to the comic book store across the street, and boy, is that store overwelming. Try to locate anything that is less than an Eisner award winning series, and you will circle each aisle twice. Unless you know your comic book stores. We saw the Akira series, Adventures of Tintin, Babar, and then Bruce asked the guy where Little Nemo books were. There were about three different Little Nemo books, all with aged copyright, but the strips were magnificent nonetheless. Check out Little Nemo! It's Art. Then Bruce translated a few pages of an anime book called "Le Robot de L'Espace." It was the ghost-in-the-shell sort of human-bound-in-tentacle-tubing-spacesuits in which all the characters have this desperate look on their faces, because they are somehow trapped on a disintegrating planet where one second is actually 24 hours on earth. Anime.

Well, it was nice seeing Bruce, since I hadn't talked to him since I suddenly dropped out of ED 11B. He told me about how he and his friends were making a video for their friend in Ohio, how he read a book about dropping out of school, and how he likes sad music and films, like Weezer's Pinkerton and "Requiem for a Dream." (I hope none of this was a secret that I shouldn't have written about!) It made me glad talking to him. I confessed that I have no interest in architecture itself. I think this was one of the few times I've said it out loud. The subject just doesnt push my buttons! Why am I majoring in it? I supposed there was art and architecture, and the latter seemed more useful, but more boring. Oh well; there are so many things to keep myself happy and active ... slowly, I'm starting to get out of this feeling that I need to do everything for a purpose. Zen!

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