heppy.     

HOME ABOUT PORTFOLIO RESUME CONTACT
 
   BLOG //     ABOUT //

Name: ymmatammy
Home: Berkeley, California, United States
About Me: Currently a student at the University of California, Berkeley majoring in Economics. Soon-to-be graduate. Looking to take advantage of what time I have left before I get thrown into the real world--I want to take photos, travel and eat good food. I like to play tennis, design things, make things from scratch and cook.
See my complete profile

______________________________


RECENT POSTS //

______________________________


CURRENT READS
//



______________________________


FLICKR STREAM //
my flickr

______________________________


ARCHIVES //

January 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
January 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
November 2007
December 2007
April 2008
June 2008
July 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009

 

 

III Next time I do this, I'm gonna do it right!
     December 21, 2009 // 11:42 PM

Pulling out my wisdom teeth that is.

For future Tammy who may or may not eventually get her upper 3rd molars out one tragic day:

1. Go to sleep for surgery. Just do it.
2. Don't do it 5 days before Christmas celebrations.
3. Eat. A LOT before you take them out. Eat EVERYTHING.
4. Don't talk to lots of people.
5. Ice Ice Ice. Heat Heat Heat.
6. Rinse that nasty out of your mouth.
7. Don't argue with people, it hurts.
8. Don't laugh, it hurts.
9. Don't yawn, it hurts.
10. Don't slip and fall down the stairs. That hurts a lot. And more than just in the mouth.

Day 4 of after wisdom teeth extraction and I have a lopsided face. If only my right cheek could be super and heal just like my left, I would be a happy camper, eating all kinds of goodness. But instead, I am DRINKING soup, noodle soup, chowder, and Jamba Juice. Oh the torture. I could SO go for a delicious, juicy burger right now. Or even some plain ol' french fries. And what I am missing the most is.. meat. Oh gosh. I am losing weight because of this ordeal.

Anyways, Christmas isn't like it used to be this year--and I think it's a combination of being somewhat paralyzed at home and not having any money to buy people nice gifts. Maybe also because I have no idea what to get them. I like making people happy! But I wish I could do some decent Christmas shopping.. Maybe tomorrow.. when the mall is surely going to be filled with thousands and thousands of people. Oh humbug!

Labels: , ,


 

III College Bucket List Update
     November 27, 2009 // 6:49 PM

This list was thought of about 8 months or so ago when we decided that our time as undergrads at Berkeley wasn't going to last very much longer. So this list was created and checked off as the past few months have gone by.

1. Go to an A's Game
Being in Berkeley we're extremely close to the Oakland A's baseball stadium. Considering we had a few fans of the A's, it was a easy to get this checked off--especially with $2 Tuesdays and $2 hot dogs. No brainer. It was done early.




2. See the sunrise at the Golden Gate
This was something I really wanted to do. It was something that I knew would be absolutely beautiful--and it was. We decided actually, after the A's game and after a long night of playing Apples to Apples and karaoke, that it was so late--we might as well do it. We pulled an all nighter to do this and it was well worth it. We got there barely on time but it worked out and it was absolutely stunning and well worth the knock out we all experienced after.

3. Go camping
This plan surprisingly followed through and it was an experience indeed. We went to Folsom Lake in Sacramento--a location we not necessarily wanted, but was the only one left by the time we decided to go and finished organizing things. But all in all, it was a heat filled, spicket filled, sweat filled trip.



4. Go to Las Vegas
I haven't even gotten to blog about vegas--so this might be long. It started with a 8-hour car ride after my event with PBL in a Toyota Sienna that we rented. George, Jacob, Marisol, Jacob and I headed off around 9:45 and had a long, music and conversation filled ride to the city of sin. With multiple pee and gas breaks, and some good music, there was no complaining about this car ride. Unbelievable--Jacob stayed up for the whole entire ride where everyone of us slept--or at least tried to. Some scary stories were exchanged, as well as some Black Jack lessons in the back seat (thanks Gannon!!).

We arrived around 6AM and blasted "Waking Up in Vegas" when we drove down the strip. It was amazing. We were tired as hell and hungry--so we stopped at Denny's for a small meal before heading to our ridiculously luxurious room at the MGM Signature. That place was AMAZING. I've never stayed at such an awesome place before. Before we went on exploring, some hit the pool--beautiful as ever, and well, George and I slept. There was no way I wasn't going to end up pulling my hair out with so little sleep. So we fell asleep for a good few hours and when everyone was ready, we head out to lunch. Thanks to our splendid room, we also got $50 resort credit and spent it on lunch eating paninis! YUM!! We walked around for a bit, exploring the strip but eventually got really tired. We hit up the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner were we saw a glimpse of COPS, the show. Sometime during that time we also headed to the gambling floor. We spent the night lounging/clubbing at Tabu which we got in free to with our hotel stay.

That night we also did a bit of gambling and I somehow found the courage to try my hand at Black Jack. I promised myself I would leave after making 20 dollars--and I did. It was so thrilling. The next day we watched Jersey Boys and walked around the strip shopping.. And then we gambled some more. So terrible. I ended up winning another $55, but lost it all again because I just wanted to make up for some losses George had. Oh well. It was really fun anyways. Jersey Boys was awesome and I'm even listening to it right now.

We tried going to Serendipity 3 but that didn't work out.. We went into several hotels to look around too. It was a really relaxing trip and we ended it eating a buffet at the MGM. We barely slept that night, as we were flying home at 7AM.. And when we landed in Berkeley, we had class. Awesome.

5. Go on a bike ride
We randomly decided to do this, and the weather was perfect for it. We went down to the Berkeley Marina down the Channing bike boulevard and it was great. We took a pit stop at 4th Street and had lunch, where we met up with Willis and Ivy who had also brought Chewy, the dog. We had some crepes and other goodies at Cafe M and were headed down to the marina. We biked over to the dog park where all the dogs were unleashed and playing everywhere. It was quite cute. When it started getting cold and late, we biked back up, surprisingly and it was not so bad until we hit Shattuck. Good thing we were only biking up to Ellsworth. To top the day off, we watched Cal cream StanfURD at the Big Game on TV. It was a glorious interception, and a beautiful scene to see Cal fans rush the Standford field.

And what's next? Probably camping at Yosemite? Maybe LA? CANADA. oh baby.

Here are more pictures from Las Vegas & biking:


 

III // 6:01 PM

So, this originally was suppose to be a post.. in which I post everything I wanted for Christmas. That was to be..:

1. A Panini Maker
2. Snowboard bindings (to complete my set!)
3. Boots
4. A keyboard cover for my Macbook

After this afternoon, sadly, all that's left on that list is my keyboard cover for my macbook...which probably won't stay on there for long considering it's only like 6 dollars on Amazon.. So how did this happen? Did Santa drop by early? No. I just decided to go crazy this Black Friday and join in all the craze.

It started with me deciding that I wanted to check out the Great Mall at midnight. Although I was super tired from the all the dark meat turkey I had, I was not going to miss out on awesome deals (at that time, which I didn't even know existed or not). So first stop was the Great Mall--I had no idea it had changed so much since I had been there. New Forever 21 FTW?! It's HUGE. And doubly as awesome. There was an insane amount of people and every store had lines getting into them. I honestly got way too close to some of those people at that mall. H&M was a horror show. They didn't decide to close it off until after I had gotten in there.. and it was just uncomfortable. Too bad I didn't find anything my size there. After meeting up with everyone, I decided I needed to do a clean sweep of F21 and bought some stuff. After that, my boots were purchased--No.3 check!

We went to Denny's after--where I experienced a horrible time with service. ALL I wanted was 2 strawberry lemonades to go. I waited in line--just to have an jerk cut in front of me to pay. And All I needed to order were two measly lemonades. As if that wasn't enough, he had created a line of his own. And the next person behind him had tried to pay even though I had said LOUD AND CLEAR "HI, CAN I GET---" Nope. No use. People in that line that had formed were even trying to pay saying they had cash. NO. EXCUSE ME? I yelled at them and told them I had been waiting forever and all I wanted was to get 2 stupid lemonades which at this point I didn't even care for anymore. To make it worse, when I finally did get them, they tasted like water. The syrup had run out. Of course, I went back in to complain about it. Worse experience ever. See if I ever go there again. It was 4 in the morning--you don't mess with people at 4 in the morning.

After that escapade, some of us had left for Target. And I just couldn't help it--$3 dollar appliances?! Are you kidding me? Who ISN'T going to get on that? We ran in when they opened the doors and well--we stuffed our cart full of those appliances. Everyone one of them. I am a proud owner of a new sandwich (okay, not quite panini but whatever, close enough) maker! No.1 check!

I finally got home at 6am after also buying some DVDs and scarves.. Fully satisfied with my purchases of the day. I went to bed and woke up at 2PM.

Oh--but it wasn't over yet. I went online after hearing some friends finally bought a snowboard. And I couldn't help but to sign onto SierraSnowboard.com and finding those $45 dollar bindings. No. 2 check!

I am definitely done spending money. It was insane. My parents tried waking me up at 9am to go shop at Macy's but I was out cold by then.

Complete satisfaction. Happy Thanksgiving ya'll.

Labels: , ,


 

III Busy bee
     October 22, 2009 // 2:08 AM

School has started and I'm a lot more busy than I thought I'd be. My time is mostly being eaten up by not only school but by PBL and an internship that I just started. I just got out of class and here I am at the BART waiting to get to SF. Sounds like there was so kind of accident over at Ashby. I knew I should've taken the earlier train :(

I'm going to be late!!! Good thing my supervisor won't be there today Weeee. Did I mention I'm blogging on my iPod? I noticed I spelled somthing wrong last post.

The operator just said there was some type of "police activity" at the Ashby station. Ugh. East bay, why do you have to be so shady!?

Ooo! And we're off!


 

III Testing out so new toys
     August 05, 2009 // 9:38 PM

I am officially blogging with my iPod touch. I made the leap and finally got my 13" in Macbook Pro! I love it and have disiplined myself so well--haven't even downloaded any programs except for Firefox. Blogging on the iPod is kinda weird but just for those random thoughts, this is good.

Btw, I'm watching the Japanese gameshow. Hilarious.


 

III Another check, and some needs!
     July 27, 2009 // 8:26 PM

I don't really think I'm doing a very good job of making this whole college experience memorable. I think from now on, I will try harder. I need to make senior year amazing--just to make up for those other times that weren't as spectacular (and note-- I said spectacular not just okay, because it's just be quite alright so far). I think this summer has gone to prove that I'm trying to take advantage of this time. All this time before real life kicks in. And with that said, I've come to blog about another thing I've crossed out on the College Bucket List: camping!

Last.. last weekend about 8 of us decided to finally make camping happen and after a 50-some long thread on a facebook message titled "camping!" we finally made it to Folsom Lake. First and foremost---this place was HOT. Unbearably so. Coming from
Bay Area--spending the last few wonderful spring and summer months in this 60-70 degree weather--this was HORRIBLE. It was like I was dumped in a sauna. But alas, it was camping and you need to make sacrifices. The night we left to go, both cars left behind schedule, but our car had the privilege of getting lost.. many times and deciding that perhaps we should listen to the GPS. NEVER LISTEN TO THE GPS WHEN YOU HAVE GOOGLE MAPS. Seriously. Anyways, we reached a gate at about 10pm and oh boy, what do you know--it's chained up. We arrived at the wrong gate. And after 2 hours of turning and backtracking--we finally made it to the campsite. It was past midnight.



The next day we spent trying to do "camping things" like hiking and swimming. The later we did for over 4 hours in the lake because of the weather. There, we met some strange and intoxicated guys who were quite crude. Anyways, they were a good laugh for the time we were there. We tried to kill time by playing Taboo but that only lasted so long. We took showers in spigets (many times through out the day) not caring whether or not this water was even clean. Phil cooked us some steak and nightfall came. Of course, we had our Skyy and the drama afterwards we won't discuss.

But all in all, I would do it again--maybe not anywhere in central valley, but I would do it again. My suggestions are for Big Sur which I've been dying to go to for a while now.

Since then.. it's been work-internship-work-internship-too short of a weekend, and so on. This weekend I took a little bit of a breaker. I went to Oakland Chinatown to check out their 夜市 Night Market. It wasn't as great as I wished it would be, but I happened to see my sister there. I also went shopping for a bit to ease the stress and it worked! Although, today at work was hardly easy.

This weekend I'm planning to finally get something I've been needing for a year now--a laptop. Everyone knows my laptop is struggling hard to keep working. The battery is dead, the screen is broken on both ends and is probably about to fall off, and the left click button is dead--and has been dead for more than a year now. My choice of a new laptop? It's gotta be a 13" Macbook Pro. Oh baby.

I can't wait until my one and a half week summer starts--that is, after work and the internship is over.

Labels:


 

III The last 30 days
     July 05, 2009 // 1:46 PM

My, this past few weeks have been quite eventful. Despite the fact that this is my first time staying away from home for the summer, it's been.. okay. Since the last post, a good bunch has happened. I said bon voyage to Janella and Keith who are going to Ohio and China respectively. Keith is doing the same program I did last year, I hope his experience lives up to everything I always went on about.

Of course, I've started working too. The kids started out being really nice, getting along with each other and having a good time. The work itself isn't tiring at all. I follow them around to snack, lunch, and do some songs. The lesson isn't hard most of the time and is pretty easy to manage since I only have about 6-8 kids at a time. What is REALLY tiring about the job (besides having to wake up at 8am everyday) is making sure they're always in my view. Constantly counting, making sure everyone gets water, goes the bathroom. Also making sure that I'm not doing something I'm not suppose to because our director is pretty damn strict.

The internship has been good so far. I really want to get into making things though.. creating things and go further than just research. But luckily, I'm just starting to really get down to designing some stuff and messing around with Photoshop.

That pretty much means I've been doing a lot of work all summer. Tiring at the least.

The passing of Michael Jackson really saddened me. Some of my friends who knew me before college might remember I was a huge fan of Michael Jackson. He was my very first idol. My very first website ever created. Very first CD ever bought. I used to watch the specials on VH1 all day. The Jackson 5 movie and the Moonwalker movie that they played all day (or, that played all day only on my computer because I recorded them on mountains of VHSs. I watched all those music videos all day long. Sad to say though, the opinion about him was not very good during that time, or any time after that for that matter. I was embarrassed sometimes when I said I really liked him. Especially after the trials, I would always say I loved Michael Jackson in "the olden days." Now he's gone and everyone is feeling sad about it. I'm pretty sure many people doubted him but now are feeling bad about it. Regardless he's a legend and I wish I could have seen him perform live. He passed away too soon.



The weekend after we had a nice little EAP Reunion because Ivy came to SF-- finally our plans followed through. We took her out to the Golden Gate Bridge but unfortunately, the place was really foggy and the layer was pretty thick. We could hardly see the bridge when we first pulled up. After a bit it finally cleared up. Made for interesting pictures though. My favorite part of the entire visit was when George pulled up his car next to Julia's and we waited for Ivy to realize we were there. The look on her face was classic. Classic Ivy's China shocking moments face. I wish I had taken a picture of it.


After the Bridge, we took a very long and traffic-y drive to Barney's on College. It was all worth it though. I think everyone had a pretty good and fulfilling meal. George and I took an oath to not have so many burgers (because it's pretty much his favorite meal on Earth). So it was satisfying for the both of us. After the meal we said our goodbyes and tried to arrange plans to get together again.


A promise to reunite again!

After that we hung out with Angela a bit more and dropped her back off in Alameda. Since then, we've seen her another time when we had a meal at Sushi House the other day. We took a walk on the random (but.. nice?) beach in Alameda. It was so awkward. A two way main road with a shopping center on one side and a beach on the other. The weekend was filled with delicious food as I went out with George's family to Dopo, an Italian restaurant on Piedmont Ave. It was amazing! The best lasagna I've ever had--perfect balance of pasta, cheese, meat and crispyness.


Well anyways, for July 4th my parents came over and we had a meal at Joshuya's. My parents liked it and I guess I enjoyed it too (even though I had Sushi House the day before). We went to Oakland Chinatown after and shopped around. I think they just wanted a break from routine and go out. I think they had a fun time even though all they did was buy vegetables and fruit. After that I helped George wash his car. Always eventful (eh. hehe). After that his sister invited us to a BBQ over in Oakland. I was a bit hesitant at first, but it turned out to be pretty fun. It was at warehouse type building. From the outside it looked abandoned. Inside, it was beautiful! It was an architecture firm and it made me really sad that I ditched my dream of becoming an architect. Everything in there was beautiful--the models, the blueprints, the colors, the inspiration! We BBQed on the ledge that looked out to the train tracks. It was really nice and quaint. It turned out a friend from Cal was there that we knew too. The fireworks were amazing, though it was a bit cold. Those fireworks in the pictures look fake almost.


Anyways, I went to bed at about 1:30am and woke up at 7am to watch the Wimbledon final. Andy Roddick never fails to impress me. When even I had started losing hope, thinking he wasn't going to get far, he beats Murray and reaches the final. An impressive act in and of itself. I was so happy to see him in the final, but playing Federer, I was scared to see a quick defeat. I was wrong and SO happy to see him fighting, and playing the best he's played ever. He had the championship in his hand, but lost it. Without a doubt, everyone knew Andy was the one who they wished ended up with that trophy. He was so emotional afterwards, and Federer, lost for words because he was so fortunate to get lucky. Andy got the breaks and had the edge, but Federer got lucky the last game of the match. Classic match regardless. I'm proud of him and I can't wait for him to show everyone what else he's got.

"This is the beginning of Andy Roddick, not the end. By his own admission he had given himself a chance to win Wimbledon, just to reach the final he had beaten a former world No.1 and then the world No.3 in front of a parochial home crowd. He lost to a player who has won more Grand Slam titles than any other and who was appearing in his seventh consecutive Wimbledon final."

I hope he gets another one sometime soon.

And boredom ensues..

Labels: , ,


 

III 2 down, and many more to go
     June 12, 2009 // 8:15 PM

I haven't posted in a few months, but this was definitely post-worthy. An epic 24 hours, one of the best so far of the summer. And it all started out with George, Jacob and I creating our "college bucket list" over some midnight In N' Out run some day a few weeks ago. And finally, we took some initiative and made it happen! Here's how it went:

June 10 @ 5:38pm Kat and Jacob's "Halo-halo mixer" was actually quite a success. Those of whom were going to the baseball game later from Berkeley decided to have a pre-game halo halo tailgating party and the food was a success thanks to Jacob's ice shaver and Jacob and Kat's talented skills in picking out yummies to put in our "drinks." The ingredients included shaved ice, ube ice cream (taro), jack fruit, condensed milk, jelly, red beans, and of course, sugarrr. It was delicious, but we didn't let ourselves get too full off of it because of course, the $1 dollar hot dogs were hours away. We finished with some left overs to enjoy for later (taro ice cream anyone?). We hopped into Kat's car and sat in traffic for a little while.


@ 7:07pm We get to the McAfee Stadium (meet up with Ivy and Ray in the process) in Oakland to watch the Oakland Athletics vs. Minnesota Twins game. The A's had been leading the series and we were planning on finally going to a dollar wednesday game for such a long time, so it was perfect! It wasn't too packed, and we thought that our seats were going to suck, but they turned out to be perfect.

@ 10:05om Alright, so the A's didn't win, but we had fun eating our cheap hot dogs and being around good company anyways. We bid fairwell to Emily, Ray and Ivy and decide what to do next. Btw, that was the last time we saw my dear Ivy before she got on her plane to Vietnam. <3





@ 11:25pm We get back to my apartment and munch on our food. Soon enough, we realize there was a Wii with Mario Party readily available. We played an intense 10-turn game and Kat reigned victorious.

June 11 @ 1:07am What else could you do but karaoke after that? We sang some good classics with Anh and did so for a while, until the microphone started dying on us. We weren't ready to quit, so we busted out the KaraokeParty.com and sang for another hour.

@ 2:17am We start getting really tired, and even pull out the futon for a slumber party, but then one of us gets the crazy idea to start playing Apples to Apples. And so when one person was down, so were the rest of us. I reigned victorious in this contest. HEEEHEHE.

@ 4:10am So we put the AtA away, and by this point, Anh goes to sleep (she has work the next morning!) and George is lying on the floor on a pillow. Me, being way past my buffer time of sleepiness, thinks of the crazy idea to fulfill another aspiration of ours: going to the SF Golden Gate Bridge to watch the sunrise. The rest thought, hey, why not? We're already awake.

@ 4:50am And so our journey continued. We layered up and headed to the car where amazingly, none of us fell asleep on the ride there. With some nice directions from Google Maps, we were there by the time the sky started to turn orange. We were really worried, but also really freakign tired, so no aggressive driving for anyone. But when we got there, it was more than worth it.


Our first picture before we proceeded to walk on the Bridge









One of the best days by far. We got home at 7am and George and Kat fell asleep at George and Jacob's place, while Jacob and I went over to their old apartment to clean up a bit before they officially moved out. After that I napped for 2 hours (making me essentially not pull an actual all nighter), and started to work for my internship. I fell asleep with my laptop on my lap a couple of hours in, but thankfully woke up before I had to go downtown to the YMCA to get fingerprinted for the BUILD tutoring job.

2 things checked off on our college bucket list : go to an A's game and watch the sunrise at the GG Bridge.

Labels: , ,