Powell Library Incident

March 14, 2011-


Tis was another day, in the library studying for my Math 32A final, when one day, I was suddenly multi-tasking. That is to say, I was studying the proofs and theorems that were going to be on the final and watching over someone else's stuff for 40-50 minutes at the same time.



Okay, before that time had elapsed, I suddenly heard a vibration. Thinking it was a text message from one of my friends or my mother, I opened my phone. It turns out it was a call from my mom!

Now, normally I wouldn't be calling in the reading room like this, where I was preparing for my math exam at that time. Unfortunately, to get up and talk outside would mean someone would steal either my stuff or that person's belongings that I was watching over. She apparently had to tell me important things, especially about reminding me about ordering SuperShuttle to go to LAX when I return for Spring Break.

I couldn't hang up the phone at all, because she said it was too important for me to even not listen. So I stayed on for as short as possible. Finally, that person in which I was watching over his stuff came back after about 5 minutes into the conversation. Unfortunately, I think I was talking maybe too loudly even as I am whispering. And suddenly, according to Ryan Samii, one of my friends who happened to be present in the reading room at that time, someone sitting behind me in a cubicle started to record the last 10 seconds of my cell phone conversation at the same time everyone in the reading room (let's say, about 100-200 students in the library including Ryan since he witnessed my incident) stood up and looked at me.

Uh oh, it looks like I was on the verge of getting in trouble for talking on my phone, so I simply said this:


"Mom, I'm in the library right now, I have to get back to studying now!" (Hangs up)


And, gosh, everyone was like laughing at me after saying that and I was like, "I'm embarrassed! I'm embarrassed!!!!!!!" Afterwards, I got a standing ovation for doing something I didn't know I was doing apparently. I thought everyone laughed because of the way I broke the prime rule of the reading room: No cell phones in the library.



Probably the worst (or what everyone else said is funniest) part was this: I was unaware that I performed an action that stood up against Alexandra Wallace's rant against Asians using cell phones in the library in the so-called video "Asians in the Library." I hadn't even seen or heard about that video, even as Jimmy Li told me to watch out for her, in which I didn't have time to see because of final exam studying times.

Later, when I talked to Marilyn McGowan and Jason Mayer on the way back from Powell, word is that both of them and everyone else has heard about my phone call. Oh dear, did I just become an unknown celebrity for just that incident? Am I going crazy at all?

It was then, that Marilyn told me everything about Asians in the Library video and how everyone thought I was THE Asian in the library Alexandra Wallace was talking about.

It turns out that everyone laughed because they all heard about that video and were very glad that I talked on my cell phone (albeit unintentionally due to me not hearing about the video) in the most genuine way.

Okay, I finally admitted my incident to my roommate and best UCLA friend, Bryan, as well as Brandon Chan and my other roommate, Ivan. They laughed so hard that they even said that this was the best break from studying after hearing my story of the incident. Later on, I found out that the last 10 seconds of my call (where I said I'm in the library and that I had to go back to studying) was recorded according to Christos and Ryan. Oh no...

To be honest, this is the one time I don't even want to become a celebrity from just this. Crap, since the call got partially recorded....

After hearing all this though, I'm finally glad that I was able to stand up against Alexandra that apparently no one else did. It's all good.

Opinions on the 83rd Academy Awards

February 27, 2011-

Okay, here are my overall opinions on the 83rd Oscars overall:


Winners who didn't deserve these awards:

-Melissa Leo for Supporting Actress because of what may have happened during her acceptance speech.

-The Social Network for Best Original Score because, well, you know already. The King's Speech or Inception deserved it more.

-Alice in Wonderland for Best Art-Direction because come on, that film's art direction isn't even close to being as good as any of the other nominees in that category! In fact, it should've gotten 0 of 2 awards instead of 2 for 2.


As for others, Christian Bale definitely deserved this Oscar as he is long overdue for a prestigious award like this. Natalie Portman and Colin Firth also deserved these wins, as they are definitely good actors for their respective films. In fact, I don't think anyone else could've pulled off performances for these roles better than they could!

For Inception, thank goodness for the 4 Oscars it received. It FULLY and RIGHTLY deserved these oscars better than any of the other films nominated in these categories Inception won in. Aaron Sorkin deserved his Oscar too, as it was an interesting story about Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

I couldn't have agreed more about The King's Speech winning the oscar for Best Picture. I know I haven't seen either this film or The Social Network yet, but they are both great films. However, I was more intrigued with the former's story than the latter's, and I am glad that The King's Speech took home the big prize.

As for James Franco and Anne Hathaway, they did a great job for their first time of hosting the Oscars. I understand there wasn't that much of a chemistry between them, but I can't blame them for that, given James's busy schedule on weekdays.

Letter to my Family, Friends from Hobby Activities, Hillcrest and Skyline Friends, UCLA friends, Certain Brighton friends, and Bioscience friends

Dear all,

It's been 1 month and 2 days since I left Facebook after deactivating my previous account. And I must say, I've missed you all dearly, since I am assuming I lost touch with about half of you as soon as left on that day.

To all of my friends I've mentioned in the title of this post, I am happy to tell you that I will return to Facebook this upcoming Sunday! However, I won't return using my old account, since I felt that I've encountered too much trouble with the previous account during that time. Instead, I plan to create a new Facebook account under my school email address. I can't wait to talk to you all again!

I hope that I won't run into the situations I encountered on my last account. There will be plenty of people I didn't mention in my title that I won't recover since I plan to try to keep my new profile as private as possible.

Again I want to say to those people I mentioned in the title, I've missed you all so much!

-Kent Yang

No Strings Attached

January 11, 2011-

Oh my gosh. It just so happens that there was a Red Carpet Premiere at the Fox Theater in Westwood Village for the upcoming film, No Strings Attached! I just happened to be present at the premiere!

You won't believe this, but I was there because the premiere took place when I was handing out fliers for fundraising our engineering project that involves building water tanks for a community in Guatemala. In case if you were wondering which club it was that I am involved with that I mentioned in the blog, it is EWB, or Engineers Without Borders. We collaborated with California Pizza Kitchen by having 20% of the money customers pay for the pizza they order be donated to our organization to meet our budget needed to build those water tanks. It was loads of fun!




Anyways, I happened to see many people apparently in a line as soon as I started my shift at 5 PM. I didn't realize what was going on until I saw the Red Carpet by the time I took a break an hour later. By the time I was done with the activity at about 7:30 PM, the premiere was under way!



Speaking of celebrities, I did indeed see Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman, Natalie Portman, Greta Gerwig, and Kevin Kline at the premiere! In addition, I saw various supporting cast members including Lake Bell, in addition to additional celebrities who went including Ludacris! One of my fellow friends in EWB managed to get pictures of both Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman during the premiere! It was fun to see them at this spectacular event! I could've sworn, what I would normally see only on TV suddenly instead became something I would see in real life!

If you want to say which TV crews I saw, I can't believe with my eyes that I saw CNN, LA Times, and Extra present at the premiere! Talk about it, there were TONS of cameras and paparazzi present at that time!

This is the third time outside of Utah in my life I've seen famous figures in real life such as celebrities. I remember seeing Sarah Hughes during my NYC trip in 2005. And I saw 42nd President Bill Clinton at the 2010 Democratic Rally for California Governors election! This is fourth overall if you include that time I saw Jeffrey Bennett's grandfather, US Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, during one of the church Sundays I went to!

Reflections on 12/21/2010 Pokemon Battle Revolution Wi-Fi Battle

Okay, how did I manage to win in this lofty double battle against an online opponent named Nal? He had the following pokemon:

Dialga (Steel/Dragon)
Palkia (Water/Dragon)
Infernape (Fire/Fighting)
Empoleon (Water/Steel)
Giratina (Ghost/Dragon)
Garchomp (Dragon/Ground)

And my Pokemon team, the so-called elite team or known as Green Pearl as this team is made from the Pokemon teams from LeafGreen and Pearl versions, consisted of:

Palkia (Water/Dragon)
Kyogre (Water)
Articuno (Ice/Flying)
Gengar (Ghost/Poison)
Metagross (Steel/Psychic)
Gyarados (Water/Flying)

Note: The pictures of the Pokemon that follow are based on the order of the Pokemon that was on my team from top to bottom (i.e. picture of the first Pokemon after this list is Palkia, while the Pokemon shown at the end of the post is Gyarados).



Basically, what happened at the very beginning was this: Nal sent out Palkia and Dialga first, with Giratina and Garchomp as backup. I sent out Kyogre and Gengar to counter this combination, with Gyarados and Palkia to back them up. As you can see, Nal used all of his legendaries plus a pseudo-legendary Pokemon, while I used only 2 legendaries and 2 normal Pokemon for this battle.



In the beginning of the battle, my Gengar quickly successfully lulled Nal's Palkia to sleep with her Hypnosis move, while my Kyogre successfully and effortlessly endured Dialga's powerful Draco Meteor move, which also sharply lowered Dialga's Special Attack stat in the process. Nal's Palkia was then attacked by Gengar's Shadow Ball, but he woke up and then used Draco Meteor to kill my Gengar, which then greatly weakened his Special Attack stat as the same consequence as what happened with Dialga. Kyogre again survived another attack from a weakened Dialga (this time, with a Roar of Time move), as my Kyogre began to torture the latter with multiple Ice Beams to bring Dialga's HP to a low amount. That's when I had to get my own Palkia into the battle to replace my fainted Gengar.


Nal's Palkia, weakened from the Draco Meteor, then unsuccessfully killed my Palkia with a Spacial Rend move, leading to my Palkia retaliating with his Spacial Rend to instantly knock out Nal's Palkia, and another Ice Beam from my Kyogre on Dialga placed the latter on the verge of fainting while he had to recharge from that Roar of Time move. When Giratina came into the battle, my Palkia then instantly killed the former with another Spacial Rend move, while Dialga's energy ran out as he was knocked out by another Ice Beam from my Kyogre.



I thought I was able to win easily with Nal only having Garchomp left to carry out on the rest of the battle. Unfortunately, I was dead wrong. She was just too fast and she knocked out both my Palkia and Kyogre (who were both weakened with low HP after enduring all the attacks from Nal's Palkia and Dialga) with an Earthquake move. This left only my Gyarados to have to step into the battle in place of both of my legendaries.



I think I was very fortunate to bring in Gyarados, since he had the Intimidate ability that lowered Garchomp's attack to a huge extent. Because of this, she was unable to effectively take out my Gyarados with a Giga Impact. With this action, I seized the opportunity to power up my Gyarados with a Dragon Dance move, which boosted both his Attack and Speed stats. Then, Gyarados proceeded to quickly terminate Garchomp with an Ice Fang, as he became faster and more powerful than Garchomp from the Dragon Dance. I won this lofty battle very closely, with my Gyarados being the MVP who took down Garchomp on his own after Palkia, Gengar, and Kyogre all fainted in this battle.



There are lessons learned from this battle. Never use moves that weaken any of your stats unless you are truly able to win the battle regardless of stat reductions with this method or that you use these kinds of moves near the end of the battle. It is because of moves that weaken the user that pretty much gave Nal a huge disadvantage against me and eventually killed him. Not to mention, I didn't win this battle offensively. I won this battle defensively, as my Kyogre, Palkia, and Gyarados were all able to survive powerful attacks due to better defenses and/or ability. In this case, Palkia and Kyogre were able to survive all the attacks from Nal's Palkia and Dialga after they were weakened by their own Draco Meteor moves, as well as my Gyarados weakening Garchomp's attack stat with his Intimidate ability.

NBA Preseason vs. Official NBA Season

I've noticed that several people seem to care about preseason so much that they ignorantly ignore the official NBA season. Why is the latter more important than the former?

There are immensely many reasons to this, of which I'd like to identify the few most significant reasons. First, do any NBA teams truly intend to do well in the preseason? I mean, come on, L.A. Lakers may not have had the best preseason for 2010, but if we did that bad in the 2009 NBA Preseason too, then how come we were able to win the 2010 NBA finals against Boston Celtics?

Second, and the most important of them all, preseason does not count towards any NBA teams' official records. As such, a preseason win is for nothing: No value, no significance, no true prediction, no importance for NBA stars... nothing.

Lastly, if the preseason is supposedly to showcase talents of all players, particularly the rookies, then all NBA teams would know what to expect. The problem is, the huge bias is the devil in the details of every single player. Not even statistics can be used to validate the true strength of one player. You've got yourself many lurking variables in the process. All you can do is watch, but you can never decipher all the true strengths of one player. It's like this, you can predict, but you can only discover 99.9% of the player's talents. Why subtract 0.1%? Because 0.1% corresponds to luck. In fact, luck may even be part of more than 0.1% of the NBA player, even up to 99.9%!

The only way to truly know a player is to watch him often enough. But even then, you still can't fully predict what happens in the next game.

All I am saying is, care for what is important, and leave the insignificant aspects behind. This is because caring for the latter will simply put you into shame if an NBA team does perfectly well in the NBA Preseason, but does a miserable job in the official season.

10th floor in Dykstra Hall at UCLA (a.k.a. D10)

Here we are, welcome to the college life at University of California, Los Angeles! In case if you haven't seen my facebook profile, or you forget what my major is, it's chemical engineering! I have tons I must reveal about my new life in Los Angeles. For those who have been following my blog, I sincerely apologize for not updating my blog for over a month.

First off, Westwood village is a nice and safe neighborhood, if I say this without mentioning the many homeless that reside on these streets. In fact, I saw one on the way to picking up my debit card living on Westwood Plaza.


The people at Dykstra, where my dormitory is at, are both nerdy and extremely social! Now, the main drawback is the fact that Dykstra is the oldest residential hall around, with the last seismic strengthening being in 1989. It looks extremely old, ghettoish, and mainly just an ordinary building; nothing else special about it. It doesn't have AC, which was the reason why I retreated to De Neve Plaza (which has AC, fortunately) when the heat wave struck LA three weekends ago, at a record high of 113 degrees Fahrenheit! Also, the main way to get inside of this residential hall is by the bridge connecting between the 2nd floor of Dykstra and the 2nd floor of De Neve Plaza. Therefore, the main entrance to Dykstra is by going through De Neve.

In spite of these major characteristics, I find my dormitory to be comfortable, with a TV and microfridge around making life in UCLA tons easier, if it hadn't been for my roommate and best friend, Bryan Kitchener, who originally came from Santa Clarita, where he and Taylor Lautner went to high school together! I actually have two roommates, if you didn't know. The other roommate is Ivan Pena, who is of Panamanian descent who came from Texas!

I've had many good friends met so far, most of whom live on the same floor as me. Although many of my D10 friends beg for me to rank my most favorite people so far, the top position is obiviously Bryan, but everyone else whom I've met all rank after him. The last position is Ivan, as I haven't gotten that much of an opportunity to get to know him because of him being at UCLA for the summer program and thus, having many friends already.

The fact that I'm now living in LA, where my most favorite NBA team and professional sports team of all-time (Los Angeles Lakers) is located, means no Utahn can try to refer me as a bandwagoner ever again. Besides, Lakers was the very first team I started to support since I started to watch NBA aggressively!

I must admit, though the classes are about my level, or perhaps even harder, I'm having a fun time sharing my interests with my fellow D10 friends! For instance, I like the fact that I'm able to discuss Pokemon with both Bryan and Ryan Samii, who lives a couple rooms down from my dorm. I even discuss Pokemon to all my other D10 friends! I have yet to play chess against Ryan, but it'd be a fun challenge to take on. Not to mention, California's chess players who joined UCLA chess/backgammon club are insanely adept at that game!

I have to say that although I miss my home back in Utah, having to leave behind my mom, I am thorougly enjoying my life in UCLA so far, in spite of the many responsibilities that fall on my burden now!