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!

First Experience in a Political Simulation

So... on my last post I mentioned about what the Empire of Noricas is all about right? Well, in a political simulation, if you haven't done such action before, then knowing what to do will be hard at first, because you won't know what to do unless you tour around to learn more. This is what I'm experiencing right now. It doesn't matter if you took so many advanced political classes before or not, lack of experience in micronationalism is always a factor for newer citizens of the micronation.

I am currently undergoing several deep thoughts about the ideas that can encourage more participation in the micronationlism. Since this is my first experience to use my growing political interests in micronationalism, despite not having taken AP Politics or even the IB level of Politics beforehand, I need a lot of time so that I can think of the best ways to be able to meet that goal of more participation, which is hard thinking as some ideas you think about may have already been used. Think about it, it is just like President Obama not having prior experience with such post as a president before.

I shall do my best to come up with the best possible ways to resolve the issue of inactivity. After all, I'm deeply committed into helping the micronation.

Empire of Noricas

Have any of you been wondering why I have mentioned the name Noricas, something unfamiliar to almost all of the Brighton people? Aside from my all my best and close friends from Hillcrest, who already know what I am talking about, Noricas is the name of the micronation started by one of my best friends, Jeffrey Bennett, along with his friends as part of the project on micronationalism.

Recently, I was told by Jeff about Noricas, something I've heard of before by other people of Hillcrest who have mentioned this name before. Now, I think you all noticed that I've been keeping track of US political news more often than usual, primarily through TV and the New York Times.

Here's the thing: being part of this micronation enables you to know about how laws work in a political simulation, something a little bit similar to the American Problems class at Brighton. Simply put, Noricas is a constitutional monarchy based on the British government with Norican as the official language of this micronation (correct me if I'm wrong on these details, Jeff.).

After hearing about it, I got convinced that I would like to know more about constitutional monarchy in political simulations. Because of my continued increase in my interest in politics, I decided to join the nation, and analyze how people handle the government through laws. I officially joined in on June 5, 2010. I also obtained a translation of my name in Norican, which is shown on my Facebook profile. Thanks Hayden Rowberry for the translation, I really like my translated name!

After joining in, I am ready to look over the things people of Noricas have done so that I can help out with these discussions!

Toyota Recalls

As you all know, Toyota has encountered one of the most unfortunate events in the history of the company. In late 2009, Toyota found customer complaints and issued recalls to many of its models. My condolences to all the Toyota employees who suffered the stress to quickly analyze and fix the brake, electronic stability control, and/or acceleration system problems that several models have. I am indeed speaking of the following Toyota models: Camry, Corolla, RAV4, Avalon, Prius, Highlander, Tundra, Sequoia, Aygo, Matrix, iQ, and Auris. I also speak of the following Lexus models: the ES series, IS series, and the HS 250h.

Lexus and Scion were hardly affected by this recall unlike Toyota, who had around 80% of the models get recalled, resulting in the delay of the sale of these aforementioned vehicles until the issue is fixed.

In spite of these recalls, which I express my deepest sympathies for as working for Toyota is amongst one of my dream jobs, there's no doubt that Toyota is among one of the best companies in the world, not just before recalls, but in the very beginning. Toyota was responsible for the success of Lexus in the first place, where the well-known LS series was launched in 1989 with a very huge success, dominating and overtaking various luxury automakers that underestimated Toyota in the luxury market by taking the top spot in terms of not only sales, but also in customer service and satisfaction.

In case if you all don't know, Lexus has earned the best reliability ratings ever since its start in 1989.

To all the people I know who own the newer Toyota models, including possibly Anna since I saw her driving her parents car, which appears to be a 2009 Toyota Corolla, I express my sympathies if your models got recalled for these aforementioned issues.

P.S. Pontiac Vibe, as a Toyota engineered vehicle, was also recalled for the same reasons, as were models built on the same platform as the Toyota Aygo.