Author: shun

Ellen and I practically grew up together. The earliest image of us was me, at about 5, sitting next to baby Ellen who could barely hold herself sitting up. I also vividly remember what her mother looked like before her passing. Now at 27, she looks exactly like her mother. Her father always told stories of her cleverness, especially when talking back to adults. And those stories are still being told and retold by my mother (our parents have been best friends). Some things just never go away.

After almost two years of being single, she’s finally found love again.

Love is in the air… Sweet romances of Spring.

So, World, meet Ellen and Eugene. Eugene and Ellen, meet my World.

I ended up getting emergency dental treatment, and my dentist took care of the remaining three bad teeth today. She gave me three shots to numb both the upper and lower parts of my mouth. Since one tooth decay went pretty deep, I guess I needed it. She said if it was any deeper, she’d need to do a root canal and put on a crown plus got into comparing dentures and dental implants, I wonder why ($$$).

As she was drilling on my teeth today, it occurred to me that how come our body knows in what configuration to grow our teeth in? I mean, most people’s teeth are born imperfect with slight misalignments all over the place (before there was braces, as we can see on this website). How does the body know where exactly to align the lower and upper teeth so that when you bite down, the ridges and gaps match up, more or less, perfectly? Or is it simply from everyday use that the teeth align themselves in place? I learnt from a friend that Jiyoung Kim DDS has some wonderful insights about this and he does a great job explaining the intricate details of these alignments to his patients, as they go to him for treatment.

I also learned something else today — to spit, I need both sides of my lips and cheeks working together. Since the right side of my face was practically paralized from the shots, when I tried spitting, I fricking drolled instead. It was embarassing (but nobody saw it). So instead of rinsing the mouth and spitting the water out, I had to just open my mouth and just let gravity did its thing. I felt useless.

I will try to simplify my experience back in Savannah so that it won’t bore everyone to death…

The Departure
The check-in terminals at the US Airways have these weird self check-in touch screens. Mine didn’t work. I think those machines confused more people than they did helping them. The red-eye flight really sucked; couldn’t sleep much the whole way. And I forgot to bring water with me — almost dehydrated.

Day One: Admissions
I picked up my rental (brand new Toyota Camry; barely 900 miles when I got it) at the airport at 9AM and was more than eager to be on my way to take care of “business”. After getting something to drink and exchanged some quarters, I dropped by Admissions and visited an old colleague and friend.

Day One: Alumni Services
But before I could do anything, I had to get parking permit, alumni access card and other documents so that I could access academic buildings more freely. So the next stop was Alumni Services (Lai Wa Hall). I showed Nancy (Tannenberg), who’s in charge of the department still, Brian and Birgit’s website and made her really happy. 🙂

Day One: Alumni ID and Other Things
The next stop was Student Services (Turner House) for my alumni ID. I had to drive all the way past MLK Blvd where SCAD erected a brand new residence hall right before Weston House. The building is a beautiful U-shaped structure that looks almost like one of those high-end NYC apartment buildings… The security guard was too busy talking on the phone to check my ID (!!), so I walked right in. To get an alumni ID, SCAD now has this new service called “Express Office” where one’s supposed to walk right in and out w/ whatever he needs done within minutes. And it lived up to its name. I was out of that place in less than 10 minutes with a spanking new alumni card in hand (but they took away my old-school, no puns intended, SCAD ID which I’d intended to keep and collect).

All kinds of paperwork I got while at SCAD.

Then I quickly rushed through Bursar’s (Propes Hall), Graduate Studies(Smithfield Cottage) and Graduation Services (Harris Hall) to make sure I didn’t owe any of them any paperwork, dues or applications (SCAD is big on forms and procedures).

Day One: Hunt for Professors
Next up was to get the signatures I came to Savannah for. The bearers of these signatures were having classes at the new Computer Art building (Montgomery Hall). Since the building was so god damn large, it was very tough locating Pat and SuAnne. Luckily, I found Pat first…. But not so luckily, she made me her guest speaker for the day for her entire class (or else she’d refused to sign my thesis paper). So I talked to the dozen or so sophmore/junior kids about my experience in the job market, about what I knew from what Jason told me about the gaming industry… etc. And I was the hero of the day…. Then Pat proceeded to ask if I was ready to return to SCAD to teach… {tumble weed}…

For the next hour and a half or so, Pat took me to interrupt, greet and meet almost every single professor teaching in the building at the time. I was so embarassed! And to everyone of them, she told them she’d asked me to come back to teach at the new SCAD Atlanta…. {Blushed}. Then I started to see more familiar faces — Joe Pasquale (he says HI to Jason Harlow and Mike Neely), Charles Shami, Greg Johnson, Malcolm Kesson, Becky Wible… etc. And FINALLY, I got to meet my Thesis Committee Chair, SuAnne, for the first time!

And then everyone had to go to some presentation from a game company, Midway, which by the way, was BORING. Yawn! I hope VV presentations were better.

SO… I got the last two signatures I needed!! What a relief. I went back to chat with Pat again but instead chatted with Greg for a lot longer. He suggested I should probably consider applying for a Ph.D program if I wanted to continue doing artsy fartsy stuff… Hmm… Ph.D in philosophy… “Doctor Chu”…

Day One: Murphy’s Law Fiasco
At 4PM, I calmly but excitedly drove back to the library to turn everything in. But then I remembered SuAnne said that “Works Cited” should probably go after “Referenced Figures” (I’d arranged them the other way around in my paper). So I wass in a frenzy to find a computer to print the last two sections of the paper in the right order. It was then that I found out the CD I burned was not compatible with PCs (DAMN PCs). So I had to pull out my Mac, rearranged the paper, burned another copy of the CD and used another Mac in the library to print the corrected version (before that, I tried no less than 4 different PCs which all had problems printing. I HATE Windows + PC). With a brand new CD and a paper fresh off the “press”, I finally turned them in. I looked at the clock. It was already past 5PM.

So I went back to my car and had the first meal of the day, a Mandarin Chicken Salad from Wendy’s (without the chicken).

I hate that Murphy guy.

Day Two: Sleep
Billy tried to wake me up a few times the next morning on Friday so that we could go out for lunch at Sweet Potatoes (Google cache). But I kept closing my eyes and falling back to sleep. I didn’t wake up until 12:30PM EST. The red-eye and the stress from the days before definitely took a toll on me.

Day Two: Daddy Time
When Billy and I arrived at the restaurant, his wife was still teaching her class. So we each held one of his sleepy kids, sitting in the restaurant, waiting for Billy’s wife to arrive. The imagery of two males with two kids sleeping on their shoulders in a crowded Southern restaurant definitely drew a lot of attention. But I think those were just curious looks. Now it’d have been quite a different situation if this was in San Francisco….

Billy and his beautiful kids!

Day Two: The Long Talk
That night, Billy and I chatted until almost 2 in the morning. It’s been so long since someone and I have such deep philosophical debates about art and other creative ideas. But mostly, we were trying to catch each other up on what’s been happening in the past seven years since’s he left for Japan. Almost everyone I know in Silicon Valley is too busy with his own stuff to be able to have this kind of talk in depth… Ironically, about the only person I can experience that in the Bay Area is also from SCAD — Jason!! I miss the creative types….

Last Thoughts
SCAD has changed…. but not really. Savannah smelled almost the same because of the damn paper mill. And I sweated like a pig after only walking for two blocks even though the outside temperature was still at around 68! And surely, I missed the hell out of this stinky little town. The biggest difference I noticed was how people on the streets looked “prettier”…. They dressed and looked nicer, almost New Yorker-ish. The old SCADie look is long gone. Now there are more preppy looking students driving nicer cars than when I was a freshman at SCAD.

I also missed how nice people can be in a town like Savannah. It’s hard to imagine administrative staff being so nice to students like they do at SCAD (except for Jeff Jones… who’s proven to be a useless prick to International students. Really… Ask any one of them).

At last, the thesis project + paper is done, over with, finished, completed, finido, NO MORE! As of 20 minutes ago, the whole package was turned in…

More on the experience later.

YAY!

Once upon a time there were two jolly squirrels.
Sometimes they quarrelled
as all squirrels do,
but mostly they were happy
as Jolly, Happy squirrels.

The squirrels lived simply and measly
with a pet they named Narby.
While Jolly worked tenaciously
so that nobody starved,
Happy made sure their nest
was very clean and tidy.

One day Jolly said to Happy,
“Why is your fur so fluffy?
Have you eaten all our food?”
Already in a bad mood,
Happy became Angry.
And so began another quarrel
between two loony squirrels.

They were calling names
and nasty words flew.
Angry went up in flames
and asked the Racoons
to throw Jolly out
as far as the moon.

There were times when the squirrels
didn’t always quarrel.
But for the sake of Narby,
maybe there was a chance
when things would be happy
again as jolly, happy squirrels.

I went to yet another dentist appointment today at Oxford Dental Care in Idaho Falls. I feel like I am repeating myself on my own blog about all these dentist visits… But today my dentist actually worked on a pretty bad cavity on #20 (that’s at the lower left part of the mouth).

As I casually sat on the dental chair, I noticed a syringe with a fricking 10-inch long needle.

Ok, it was more like six inches… or whatever… it was pretty damn long.

First she used some kind of cherry-flavored anti-infection rub to clean the back of my lower left jaw. Then came the long needle. I clutched. It didn’t really hurt that bad when the needle puntured the skin and went all the way to the back mandible — it was the fact that I saw, and felt, how far that damn needle went into the mandible muscle that disturbed me quite a bit. And she did it THREE times to make sure that the local anesthetic would be evenly distributed.

In less than a minute, slowly the tingling feeling started to spread from the gum to the tongue, and then finally the entire left jaw. She had to do this because the cavity actually penetrated the first layer of the tooth, and she needed the ability to maneuver the drill inside the tooth itself, which typically would cause excruciating pain (what a great way to torture prisoners; I am sure the Bush Administration knows all about it).

The procedure only took about 20 minutes. But it took hours for that portion of the face to regain any kind of sensation (I walked out of the dentist’s office at 9:45AM; the numbness didn’t go away until around 1PM).

I am glad she didn’t do both sides of the mouth or else I’d have completely lost my facial functions and drolled all over the place on the drive home…

It’s not very comforting to know that I still have three more teeth to go after this one, gotta try Alaska Dental Associates friends keep talking about. I sure will be doing a lot more brushing and flossing from now on.