I had a blast that year. Living in the dorms(Middle Earth) was a fun experience that I will not forget. Met lots of new people. Things didn't really seem to go

Middle Earth

too well with my roommate though. I think that had to do with me walking in on him and his girlfriend in bed during the first(orientation) week. Me and my roommate(who shall remain nameless) hadn't even met yet at the time that happened. I think he was really embarassed and it was like he thought I looked down on him because of that incident. Anyways, he felt awkward whenever he was around me, so he basically tried to avoid me. I got along with everyone else in my suite though, mainly because we all had similar interests...video games, basketball, and ragging on each other.

A few weeks into the school year I met this Japanese girl named Akiko. She was a very sweet girl. A little on the quiet side, but a very nice person. Being the same major, we had a lot of the same classes so we studied together. We became good friends, but eventually I messed everything up because I started liking her. I sort of thought she would give me a chance, but she dissed me. Brought me down from cloud nine. But I moved on and still had a good time.

Well eventually things got bad. My grades were getting worse and my stress level was at an all time high. I was taking second year French and it was getting extremely difficult. I went from being one of the best students the year before to the worst in the class. Everyone seemed to speak French so well, that I was begining to think I was in France. In addition to that, I was bombing my writing class as well as my stats class. My big mistake was that I was letting my bad grades get the best of me. I tried studying my ass off. I stopped hanging around with my suite mates and that was when I began realizing how loud they were. I didn't realize that I used to be loud with them. Well I got so irritated one day that I wrote a letter to my friend Simon(who was sort of the leader of this group), telling him to "shut the fuck up" during quiet hours, and I left it on his door. What an asshole I was. Anyways, after that I didn't really spend much time with them anymore. I kind of regret doing that at the time, but I was stressing out and fighting to avoid getting kicked out of school.

Also during that year I met a few people(Patty, Joanne,

Patty

and Ai-lang) who I became good friends with. With things going bad with my dorm friends, I began spending a lot of time with them. I got along with Patty really well. She helped me cope with all of the stress. We used to stay up 'til the wee hours of the morning just talking. We were very open with each other...we talked about everything. She was the first person who I felt completely open with. Until I met her I was a pretty quiet and reserved person. Though we had our difficulties, we somehow managed to stay good friends throughout the year. After that year ended, me and Patty just kind of grew apart. Didn't see her much after that. Bumped into her occasionally around campus, but haven't seen or heard from her since graduating from UCI.

Probably the best thing that happened that year I became friends with two people who I have since become very good friends with. I met Darin Kongkasuriyachai towards the beginning of the year. And not long after, I met John White. Coincidentally, they became boyfriend/girlfriend a few months later.

When I first met Darin, I thought she was the friendliest and most talkative person I had ever met. I just could not get her to shut up. Kidding. When we first met, I quickly recognized her as being Thai. She had those distinct Thai fobbish looks. :) I

Darin

wondered to myself...how can she have been living in America so long(10 years), yet still look like such a fob?? We got along really well, but our friendship hit some rough points especially after her breakup with John the following year. I guess during the time before the breakup she felt jealous of me since me and John hung out a lot. A girl jealous of me?? Imagine that! Anyways there was a short period of time where I felt that she was very bitter towards me...so I tried to keep a distance. Eventually time healed some wounds...she had gotten over John for the most part. She apologized to me for blaming me for the whole ordeal. From then on, our friendship has become pretty strong. I consider her one of my closest friends. Definitely one of the smartest people I know. She excelled at UCI, getting mostly A's and finishing with something like a 3.6 gpa. One thing that totally amazed me was how she planned her entire 4 year schedule her freshman year. She knew which classes she was going to take for every quarter. Very well organized. These days she is getting her Masters in Biology at Johns Hopkins. Expect her to find a cure for cancer sometime in the near future. :)

John was half Japanese and half white(of course). We lived in the same dorm that year, but we didn't meet each other until the middle of the year because he was on the first floor and I was on the second. Our dorm was so segregated that nobody on the second floor associated with the first floor people. Well after I stopped hanging around my suite mates, I began meeting other people in my dorm. When I met John, we hit things off really well. At that time I was going through a major Japanese wannabe phase. I listened to Japanese music,

John

ate Japanese food, watched Japanese dramas, read Japanese comics, took Japanese classes, and off course I was chasing a Japanese girl. He taught me a lot of Japanese words and phrases...:) And he helped translate my Japanese comics for me. The cool thing about John was that he had the best sense of humor...always laughing, cracking jokes, and screwing around. He was a wild one. Before he met Darin, he was in a fraternity, he was drinking, smoking pot, and going to the race track a lot. But Darin changed all of that. John was so p-whipped that he gave all of that up. But after the breakup he was back to his crazy self. The good thing was that he never let it get out of hand. He was a very smart individual...finished with his degree in Economics with a 3.6 gpa too. The thing that blew me away was that he started his freshman year when he was 17 years old and finished in two years and two quarters, which is totally unheard of. And now he is working in Vietnam for the marketing division of CAT (a well know construction company).

Well, the year was a memorable one. Made some friends and lost some friends. The biggest disappointment came towards the end of the year, when me and my best friend Elliot went our separate ways. Normally I would not let something like this bother me, but this was someone who I had been friends with since

Elliot

Kindergarten...14 years! Anyways, during mid year we made an arrangement for Elliot(who lived in the same dorm suite as me) to switch rooms with my roommate. I didn't get along with my roommate and since he was good friends with Elliot's roommate, we all figured that this would be a great move. Well, things were cool for the first few months. But eventually we started getting on each other's nerves. I starting seeing all of Elliot's bad habits and vice versa. I don't know about Elliot, but everytime I saw him, I would start mentally cussing him out. We stopped talking to each other. He started hanging out with his friends and I hung out with mine. I just could not wait until the end of the year. Well to cap off the year...I had a final exam for my political science class at 8am on a Thursday and that morning Elliot woke up when my alarm clock went off and without realizing what he was doing, he turned it off and went back to sleep. I ended up waking up at 9am. I freaked out and started yelling at Elliot. He apologized and said he was half awake when it happened and he didn't realize what he was doing. Well, I ran off to my class, and by the time I made it there, I only had 45 minutes to take a two hour essay exam. Well, to make a long story short, I failed the exam and my B+ in the class dropped down to a D. Repeated attempts to explain what happened to the professor were ignored. I had reached my threshold with Elliot. I came back to my room to find a one page written apology on my desk. I wasn't too forgiving of a person at that time. I didn't speak to him again for quite some time.