i suppose eschewing the shuttle once in a while is good for me. :) at 10am, i ran out to catch the bus, but even at the curb it was already packed like sardines. the weather was cloudy, windy, yet peculiarly balmy, so i began to walk. i traversed the trodden way up plympton and down mass ave to enter the gate near bolyston hall. then it happened: the natalie-spotting. she was coming out of the gate into the street as i was entering the yard. it was an unexpectedly exciting moment as we passed each other, she in her red wool coat and toting a small leather bag. yeah, i understand natalie portman is just like any other student, but still, seeing her gives you a slight thrill. she's such a talented celebrity, somehow you think that you may be imparted with such goodness by merely being in the same zipcode, or sharing the same cantabridgian sidewalk. this is the first time i've seen her all year, so please forgive my inexplicable star-craze. and isnt JTT going to return to campus next year? ooh l� l�...

advo online is still ongoing. i designed an impromptu homepage prototype tonight when i should have been doing more 'productive' stuff, but it's a good release at the end of the day. "let me be empty / and weightless and maybe / I'll find some peace tonight" (as spoken by the angelic ms. maclachlan.)

still dealing with summer housing issues, but i found out tonight i was accepted to stay at my preferred mit fraternity house! house is beautiful, located in posh neighborhood, stocked with the friendliest guys... completely ideal. i will most likely move in this summer, but just seeing if i can procure free housing with much luck...

my nylonized (read: digitized) tote bag is a smashing success. well, not really, but in my dreams it flies... and peels fruit...

it's oh so quiet. shhh. shhhhh. what's the use of falling in love?

it's precisely 2:54 am right now. i feel overwhelmed because i have so many things from today that i wish to blog-alyze, but i need to get to bed pretty soon or else i'll be in big (headachy) trouble tomorrow. lots of stuff going on at this time. but maybe if i use a little systematic methodology i will be able to organize myself accordingly. hope is extant.

i would call this entire day a definite chapter in 'crazy adventures of chrissy' or something to that cheezy made-for-tv effect... after getting up at 8 on a friday morn, i was pleasantly greeted with the presence of an anomalous omelet station at breakfast (i opted for a cheese + mushrooms + canadian bacon combo, yum), and then i worked on math with tously-haired mike from mather. as we sunk into the white cushions of the couch, our convo rapidly volleyed between partial derivatives and who's-who in winthrop house. heehee. the impromptu pset review was definitely a morning-brightener, and kept my spirits high throughout my next two lectures. laughter definitely is great, albeit temporary, medicine.

i needed to do some errands in chinatown, so i zoomed over there via the T and within the small span of time managed to pensively sip a pearl green tea, visit several travel agencies, and buy some delish pastries at the ho-yuen bakery. come by if you ever want some hot buns!

okay, now here ensue the navigational hijinks.

i arranged to meet someone at sigma chi, an mit frat i'm looking at staying in over the summer, at a predetermined time in the late afternoon to take a house tour and to get a general sense of living conditions. i figured i would just go there directly from chinatown. in his directions for me to get to sigma chi, chris said, 'take the #1 bus, and it's on the first street after the bridge into boston.' i knew the #1 route... mass ave all the way, baby. so i naively (very naively, actually) assumed that the T red line and the #1 bus were on synonymous routes. harvard, central, and kendall stops were in generally the same locations for both transits, so it'd be reasonable that the next stop would be in similar spots, right? wrong. when i got off the platform at charles/mgh, i soon realized that i had crossed the wrong bridge across the charles river. i was nowhere near mass ave. argh. so a helpful lady on the street advised me to take the T back to park street and take the green line down to hines. i ran back up the stairs to the platform and took the next inbound train.

when i got to park street, i wanted to make sure i was on the right track (no pun intended, really). i asked an mbta official what stop to get off at for mass + beacon. he replied, 'arlington.' okay. so i hopped on a train and got off at arlington. getting to beacon was a hop, skip, and jump to the other end of the park. 5 minutes. i was still on a roll. i looked at the address #'s. beacon: 101, 102, 103. uh oh. i needed 532. well, no big deal, just five blocks to walk, right?

turns out that each block only spans 50 addresses (100-150, 150-200, etc), and each block is humongous. i must have trekked 8 massive blocks when i finally got to the mass ave intersection. i was already 40 minutes late to the established meeting time. this was ridiculous. my feet hurt, i was perspiring under my lofty wool sweater, and i was altogether flustered upon arrival. not a great start nor an ideal first impression. yeah, i may be a harvard student, but i'm absolutely terrible at navigation.

so anyway, that was my lost-in-boston saga. it sounds like nothing when written like this, but the ordeal was excruciating, just walking each block and seeing how slowly the building numbers seemed to creep. frustrated that no matter how fast i walked, time would still race ahead of my feet, ahead of my line of sight. but finally i reached my destination, and reoriented myself at that point. :)

goodness gracious. i really need to go to bed, but i havent even mentioned my post-dinner plans! and oh-how-exciting they were. ah well, i'll just say it included a cake slice balanced on a door handle, a repeatedly upset (as in spilled) box of chinese chocolate-filled crunchy wafer swirl swizzles, and cows. (how's that for alliteration? booyea!) i'll let you muse on that for a little bit. until then, goodnight.

hey.

so i finally got my blogger config'd, styled, and ready for show! i'm quite
excited to have a straightforward method to express my thoughts, dreams,
news, and cmliu-relevant (or irrelevant, actually) issues with ease,
convenience, and versatility. Actually, I'm in the alpha lab right now (on
the unix machines) and the blog i wrote two minutes ago just got
unintentionally erased because i resized the netscape window and it
apparently refreshed the page, erasing all the text i typed in the form box.
oops. i'll have to keep that in mind. anyway, as i was saying, blogger is
great because i dont have to deal the messy archiving business, and it's a
lot better than getting drowned in the sea of endless tags in a tired, yet
trusty, windows notepad text editor. by getting my nose out of hard code,
it's mere reassurance that i'm surfacing, finally. :) although, just for
paranoia's sake, i'm going to hang onto my snorkel... for html emergencies,
or maybe just for bermuda... pink sand, indeed.

too bad i have section in 15 minutes... i wish i could type all day. alas.
well, i'll have plenty of time to keep this up if i choose half an hour each
day to spill what's on my mind. this afternoon i'm going into fleming
printers to put in the order for the next batch of HRO posters... i'm really
proud of the design i whipped up this week. as i was daydazing in rehearsal
i got the vision for some kinda of old-fashioned, yet funky, effect with the
poster. i'll post the design sometime soon, as well as my day-glo (my
nickname is chartreuse. not really.) poster from the last concert. no one
can deny that they were eye-catching! heehee. posters are great because
you get such an incredibly vast audience for your work (even through the
lamentable act of tearing them down). well, paper is vulnerable, but ideas
are impervious. how beautiful is that...