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Thanksgiving Break

First and foremost I would like to apologize to the readers for being late to write this post, but on an entirely different note my Thanksgiving break was pretty traditional. My mom made food for my whole family, we went over to my uncle’s house in Chino Hills, since it was the only house large enough to accommodate everyone, and we stuffed ourselves full of turkey, ham, and other foods we would feel guilty about later. This year my mom brought mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, turkey with stuffing and ham, while one of my uncles brought either stingray or skate and seafood pasta. The stingray or skate was seasoned with what tasted like Cajun seasoning but I was not 100% sure and the pasta had shrimps and surprisingly large scallops mixed throughout. With all this great food I was expecting to be eating lots but that was not the case this year, but my time at UCI, eating at the Anteatery, caused my body to not be able to take as much food as it did before. Granted, this is probably a good thing since I am also not as active as I once was so it helps to keep me in shape.

Besides the food, my oldest cousin actually brought her boyfriend to this year’s Thanksgiving which was a nice change from the usual crowd. Also, I personally found some enjoyment when he tried to challenge a different uncle to a drinking contest. It was later that I would learn that the uncle the boyfriend challenged had the highest alcohol tolerance in my family. From there, the table started to shrink as people would move to the couches or beds upstairs to fall into their various stages of food coma while many of the younger people stayed at the table making small talk. As it usually does every year, the question of “do you have a girlfriend?” got asked to both me and a cousin of mine. My cousin, being the more personable of the two of us talked for a while about his preferences and how he hasn’t found the right girl and stuff. Then when it came to my turn I tried my hardest to avoid the question and ended up stammering out an answer that seemed sufficient enough to just get me past that question.

The conversation then changed to sports, both e-sports (which I had the most knowledge about) and traditional sports (which I knew nothing about). This was where the uncle that owned the house we were having Thanksgiving at, chimed in that Lonzo Ball is having his house constructed somewhere nearby. Since there was some basketball fans at the table we hopped into a car and drove over. When Ball’s house came into view the first thing that struck me was the color, I’m not sure if they just chose the first color that was on the options sheet or decided to get cheaper paint since the house was so big, but either way it looked about the same shade of orange that our president is comically depicted to be. Even though the house itself covers 3 acres of land I personally wouldn’t live there.

After we returned from the house, it was time for dessert followed by packing up the leftovers. Dessert was nothing special just a tiramisu cake my mom also brought but it was good regardless. I wasn’t part of the leftover division committee so I just chilled on the sofa and thought about what I was going to do once I got back to UCI. I know that finals are quickly approaching but it was definitely a well deserved break to recharge and prepare for the end of fall quarter. That being said, I have a problem with breaks because I go a bit too crazy when I have no obligations to do especially when I have a computer that can run a game or two (which the one I am currently typing on can). What it boils down to is that I managed to mess up my sleeping schedule to the point where I can’t fall asleep until around 3am. And since I wake up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 8am for class, its probably not the best idea to be running on 5 hours of sleep. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Thanksgiving break; a time for turkey and troubles with circadian rhythm.

 

Zot On!

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Thankful for the Rest

To be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of Thanksgiving. Turkey’s okay, but without gravy it can be pretty dry and bland. I also feel like the day is usually pretty boring in general, with a lot of sitting around and small talk. This year wasn’t really different in any way, but I found that I enjoyed the event much more than I had in previous years. After being away from family, and having to eat Pippins food for months now, (not that it’s terrible or anything) I was more than happy to eat turkey and mashed potatoes and listen to my grandparents talk about unknown topics in Korean.

Thanksgiving this year was like a rest point in a long road trip, and it was really nice to touch base with everyone back home. When I was back in nor cal, it was like I had never left. I felt however that everything was much better than I remember it being. I think it has to do with perspective, and as cliche as it is, I definitely appreciate the conveniences and comforts of home a lot more now. It was so nice being able to walk literally two feet out of my room into the shower, without having to wear flip flops or anything at all. It probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it’s the little things like this that I feel make home so comfortable in a special way. My room, my neighborhood, and the atmosphere all brought back a lot of nostalgia for me. The night before my flight back to Irvine, I was actually not looking forward to going back. Not because I dislike Irvine, quite the opposite. I was just sad to leave home again, maybe even more so than at move in.

I know it’s only been about three months that I’ve been away from home, but it still feels like a long time since I haven’t spent that much time away from home before. Even though I’ve adjusted to dorm life fully at this point, I still really enjoyed being home and kind of going back in time for a bit. Of course I still had finals in the back of my mind, but for the short break, I was thankful that I was able to forget about my worries and enjoy the familiarity of my family and home.

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Going Home or Away from Home?

For Thanksgiving Break, we only got Thursday and Friday off, so the break was way shorter than the week long high school break I’m used to. Some classes were canceled on Wednesday as well, but sadly none of mine were. So I went to all my classes and left Wednesday afternoon for the long 4 day weekend (after leaving all my food with my friend that stayed over the weekend because the dining hall closed)!!
My Thanksgiving Break was pretty uneventful to say the least. My family doesn’t do the big family dinner like in the movies so there was no rush to cook massive amounts of food or get table settings ready the night before. Thanksgiving honestly felt like any other day to me. This year, however, we tried to be more Thanksgivingy and got a rotisserie chicken and pumpkin pie from Costco for dinner! Probably the closest to Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever gotten. We eat dinner together every night, so it was nothing special but it was still nice to get a day off to spend with my family. We also don’t do the mad rush for Black Friday sales so Thursday night was pretty chill. Basically, Thanksgiving break was just a long weekend for me, but much appreciated after the wave of midterms.
I did eat my weight in Korean barbeque at Gen in Fullerton Friday night though. I’ve been craving it for weeks and I finally got to go. My family eats a lot, especially when it comes to all you can eats, so we stayed there for the full two hour limit and they actually had to come nicely kick us out lol. Just to put in perspective how much my family of five actually ate, here are some numbers: 70 pieces of beef tongue, 20 pieces of rib meat, 39 pieces of galbi (beef short ribs), 30 pieces of flat iron steak, and three plates of garlic calamari just to name a few along with plenty of side dishes. Impressed? I know our server sure was.
But anyways, not sure if you guys remember, but I live on campus in Valimar in Middle Earth even though I only live 20 minutes away. Also, I go home almost every weekend, so going home is a normal thing for me and UCI’s environment isn’t that different from home. However, being at home for more than just a weekend was really weird. Even though I was in the same home I grew up in, everything feels different and after the second day, I started to miss my dorm.
Over the past quarter, my dorm started to become my home. During break, I missed the familiar faces I saw in the hall everyday. I missed the couch on the second floor common room I always curl up with my blanket in to take my 1 AM power naps. I missed walking down the hall to see my best friend. I missed seeing my RA when I leave to go to class. I missed all the small things that started to make Valimar home. It’s weird because I left my dorm to go “home,” but ended up missing my dorm home and dorm family. (Fun fact: my phone saved Valimar as home) I am so grateful for both my homes and both my families.

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League of Legends World’s With TAG@UCI

League of Legends or LoL for short, is a competitive multiplayer game for PC. Chances are however that if you go to UCI, you’ve heard of it at least in passing. Take one step into the Esports Arena and you’ll see many players both new and old duking it out on this virtual battlefield. Although not quite as mainstream as traditional sports, the competitive scene for this game is enormous. And despite the fact that the comparison of video game to sport is more than controversial, there is no denying that throughout the world people love the game as much as any other.

Recently, The Association of Gamers at UCI held a viewing party for the League of Legends World Championship, and I was happily able to attend. It’s an annual event that is live streamed at the Crystal Cove Auditorium, and although I personally don’t play, I was amazed at the passion and excitement of all the fans. Sponsors provided pizza, chips, and drinks for all of the spectators, and the event was even sponsored by big name hardware companies like HyperX, Nvidia Geforce, and GIGABYTE, who were all contributing prizes for the raffle. Unfortunately, I wasn’t lucky enough to win a new graphics card or keyboard, but I was really impressed at the production value, and the fact that TAG was able to snag such high profile sponsors. I had heard about it, but I didn’t fully realize how large and passionate the gaming community at UCI really was.

The theater was completely packed, and there were people rooting for both the grand finalists: Samsung and SK Telecoms. SKT had won three of the past six championships, so people were expecting them to take every game in the best out of five series. To the community’s surprise however, Samsung managed to win three games straight and take home the victory. Even though I had no team I was especially rooting for, being there with people so passionate about the game was an amazing experience. There were so many hype moments and exciting games that even though it was 3 AM, the whole crowd was completely full of energy.

I would highly recommend this event to anyone. Even if you’re not a fan of League of Legends or you’re not a fan of video games in general, I think it’s definitely worth going to.

The League of Legends Finals at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing

 

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Housing Application Experience

This post is going to be a bit more serious since I would like to cover one aspect of college life here at UCI that took me off guard. Specifically the housing options for your second year at UCI.

At 7am on November 17th, the applications for housing next year, as in next academic year, were opened. To have the window open for applications for sophomore year housing while your still a freshman in your first quarter didn’t make sense to me. Either way with the application window opening at 7am, many students were left with 2 options, stay up or sleep way earlier than they are used to, so that they can apply for housing for their second year at UCI. My dorm decided to stay up and apply so we loaded up on snacks and plugged in. While everyone else was in the first floor kitchen readying themselves, my friends and I were up in my room working on various assignments and in my case, playing the occasional video game.

By the time 7 am rolled around, my roommate was fast asleep while the rest of the people in my room were in various states of sleep deprivation. Personally I was doing okay because a friend of mine logged into the game I was playing so I guess I got lucky. We quickly woke everyone that was still in the room up and started the application process. I fondly remember how quick and fluid the application process was, is what I wish I could say because the second you hit begin application, you could feel all the traffic that was going through the site. All the traffic caused my application to be submitted at 7:14 am which, after talking to some other students, is apparently a really late time to submit the application. Once the application was finished, I decided it was to my benefit to sleep until my alarm at 8 am wakes me up. So in essence, what I strongly recommend my readers to do when they start their undergraduate year at UCI is to try and get your R.A to get everyone to tour the off-campus and on-campus housing options or if your R.A is not down to go just grab a group of friends and tour them yourself. Either way you need to figure out where you are planning to stay the following year. The application will ask you to rank the various housing communities in order of preference so it would be in your best interest to tour all of them.

The communities are as follows: Vista del Campo Norte, Vista del Campo, Camino del Sol, Campus Village, Puerta del Sol, and Arroyo Vista.
So I strongly recommend you to check those communities out at some point during your first quarter and figure out which ones you like better than others.

 

Zot On!

Josh