SAACURH at Louisville, KY

it was a totally wasted weekend. i didnt like the conference at all, and even according to some of the people who had gone to the conference last year, it was pretty bad. if you guys are wondering, then SAACURH stands for 'South Atlantic Affiliate of College & University Residence Halls.' so basically its the governing body for the residence hall associations in the southeast america region. it consisted of kentucky, who were the hosts, mississippi, north carolina, south carolina, georgia, louisiana, arkansas, virginia, florida, and of course, us, georgia, or as typical southern people would pronounce it as 'gee-or-gia.'

i personally thought the whole thing was pretty awful. i could hav spent a good time back in atlanta going for the basketball game, the football game, getting plenty of sleep and preparing for my health and calculus tests. honestly, i think most of the schools went there to just have fun. because louisville was such a place that we needed to get chartered bus rides from place to place, and with that, there's the inevitability of delays, we had to wait for most of the people to get to the place to begin. so they'll start playing music, and since its the south, they play some real hiphop music, and most of the students there were african americans, so they'll start dancing super seriously. it got to a stage that people started getting on the stage in numbers and it grew to an unimaginable partying scene.

us being typical tech people, save for erika, who joined the others in dancing, we just sat there, wasting time, and just getting some sleep. i did not get the whole thing. i didnt want to be a party spoiler, but i simply could not comprehend why all these students were cheering about the conference and getting so excited over music when the conference hadnt even started. i just sat there, startled. quite simply, i detest hiphop now. all people do is raise their hands and wave them up and down, the girls swing their heads and just move their hips. there's no variation, and believe me when i say this, coz i saw it throughout the conference and more at tech, that's all there is. everyone's moves are the same. i conclude, its a fad. everyone's into it coz everyone portray it as being cool, what everyone else does. hiphop has degenerated badly in the recent times. i am digusted by most of the songs. i find it hard to accept that some people get rich by just simply counting in what they supposedly call 'songs.' i was telling most of the people in my dorm prior to this, but just by counting from 1 to 5, they get like millions, while we people here, can go on to count til a trillion, and would not get the same amount of money. and all these slangs, 'herre,' 'e'rbody,' and whatever you can come up with, its just a sing of illiteracy spreading. i happened to bump into someone's blog, whom i happened to be in the same class in tech, and realized that as well, the words are transcending into actual use.

anyway, you get the point. so i just sat there not in the conference mood. it could be because there was very little interaction among the other 9 members i went to the conference with. plus the fact that we were one of the few rich schools whose residence hall association paid for our flight. most of the other students drove some 8, 9 hours to louisville, and spending that much time in such a small space can do both good and bad. i guess for most people there, it worked for the good.

i tried to make myself think that we went there for the sole reason to present our bid for the S.A.L.T. (student award for leadership training) award. we presented about the retreat that we had after our elections to get trained into being officers of the hall council. and i think we did well, coz we won. and the only cheer we did was something so utterly nerdy, yet something only we could do it. wanna know how the cheer goes? be my guest.


'e to the power of x, dy/dx,
e to the x, dy/dx,
secant, tangent, cosine, sine,
3.14159,
square root, cube root, poisson, bracket,
disintegrate...
yellow jackets!'

yes, you read that right. that was our cheer. and we consolidated the public perception that we indeed are a nerdy school. i think only MIT, CalTech and ourselves can lay claim to using that cheer. but to our surprise, LSU (lousiana state university) and some others liked it, thought it was hilarious. well, it is, but my god...

we got what we wanted, so it was all right with me. some of the things i noticed were shocking, like how dumb and ignorant some people can be. and all of you would have heard about the blonde jokes. and for one particular person there, it was so fitting. this blonde, personifies probably all the blonde stereotypes ive heard of, so much that this other tech student, chris, and i were looking at eachother with our mouth wide open, trying to comprehend that it was indeed what we saw. im not sure about the other states, but we kinda realized most of the other georgian university students arent that bright. im sorry, i just had to say it, coz it was so apparant. i would have preferred not to mention it, but there were so many incidents it was not funny anymore. i know, its not fair to make judgement on intellect, but you'd think that for lack of intellect, they'll be better in certain things that us, but that wasn't to be.

and someone had to nerve to say that they thought georgia tech was one of those universities advertised on tv, like a certain ITT-Tech, which is a huge insult to us. but of course, we can't brag about our academic reputation, so we just kept quiet.

at the end of the last night, we traded some of our university merchandise for other universities, and i got couple of stuff from LSU, Virginia Tech and Western Kentucky. our mascot buzz was a very popular figure, that we practically held a ransom and they gave it, coz they really wanted it. john got a bag full fo tennessee stuff and i got tons of LSU stuff. and Chris traded with our beloved UGA for the feelers we had on our heads throughout the conference with our buzz for their mascot, the bulldog. we took that around, pretended to hang it on a noose, and while i had my buzz, i poked the bulldog's butt with the buzz's sting right infront of the UGA students. obviously that didnt go well with them, but its all in the name of fun. we intend to have an effigy of that bulldog sometime in the future.

on sunday morning, we went downtown to have breakfast at macdonalds and the most random thing happened. while we were eating, some middle aged man came over, stood behind Laura, and took her ponytails into his hands. we were just staring at him, i swear, for a minimum of 5 seconds, just thinking, 'what the hell is going on?' i dont know how long it took, but suddenly the man said 'oh my god, i thought you were my daughter! i swear she looks just like you!' and we were shocked yet again. i thought it was some weirdo trying to do something to Laura. if could take the pictures of everyone's face during that 5 seconds, it would be pretty hilarious. the man recovered well from that embarrassment, but we were determined to find out if the man was speaking the truth, or if he was lying. true enough, about 10, 15 minutes later, a girl walked in, and the man took her in his arms and walked over to us, and told us it was her daughter. all of us started laughing because the man's daughter indeed looked very much like Laura! how coincidental eh? but the whole 5 seconds deal was so hilarious, we talked about it over and over again. weird things just happens at times.

other than that, louisville was a better place than i had expected. i didnt exactly 'get lucky in kentucky' as the famous saying goes, but it was alright. just save for the whole conference. veterans tell me that the NACURH (national affiliate of blah blah blah, you can figure it out) is going to be much better, but it'll be in the summer, which im not sure if i'll be serving internship or not, plus, with the way this conference went, im not exactly sure if i wanna go for this kinda thing ever again.

i went to sleep at like 3 every night since thursday, so i was really really tired when i got back. i tried to get some sleep on saturday night. around 3 something, i noticed some girl jumping up and down on top of me, asking 'why i was sleeping.' what do you think im sleeping, its fucking 3! she said that she needs to leave in about 30 minutes and she's still awake. well, if you're leaving in 30 minutes in the middle of the wee hours of the morning, she's fucking right, she better be awake to get ready! i was so pissed off, but so tired, i just stared at whoever she was, and Jeff, who I assume was the one who let her into the room. you never disturb a sleeping person for whatever reason except for emergency. and that was not. i dont care if you have to start heading back at 4 in the morning, it is none of my concern, and i didnt even know the freaking person for crying our loud. she covered my head with the hooded jacked i was wearing, and covered me in the comforter. first you wake me up, and now what, you're trying to suffocate me? that really ticked me off. they could have left to go to the lounge to talk, but no, they were talking oh so obviously in the hotel room while i was trying to get to sleep. talk about being sensitive to others.

i came back to atlanta, feeling so glad to be back, but with our flight delayed for about an hour coz it was raining pretty heavily in atlanta. i had a judicial board meeting that night, and still had to cram in some study time for my final health test, so i was hoping i'd get some sleep, but that didnt happen.

the case for this week was weird. i dont think im at the liberty to discuss it, but it was one of those weird pranks. the guy being present in the questioning was frowning time to time and i can't blame him.

i tried to do the best i could for the preparation for my health test. i think i did alright. in order for me to get a B (if i calculated correctly), then i need to score 78 or 79 to secure a B grade. and if, for some reason, i happened to get A in English and make sure i cement my A for calculus, then i might end up this semester with a 3.3, which would be good.

i had a calculus test this morning, which i thought went so much better than the last one. it was something like that test 3, which was on differentiation. i better get an A on this. i need to score 94 for this and the final exam in order to get an A without curving, but with so many people doing so badly, i think a curve is a certain possibility, but im not going to depend on that. but then, with that said, i probably shouldnt talk that way, its been pretty apparant since my middle school days, when i think i did well, it turns out the other way round.

so i have to finish off numerous english blog entries, read the rest of the history test, which i think will be done during the flight to naperville tomorrow, and just revise for calculus for this semester to be over. good deal. its fast ending. i cant wait to get back home to naperville tomorrow.

i could have actually left today. after 10am, which was after the test, i was done. my english and health class were cancelled, and i could skip the calculus and histroy lecture tomorrow and it wont hurt at all, so i thought i could do away. but orbitz wouldnt pick up the phone for operator support, so i could not change my flight schedule. but i dont think i would have changed anyway, i would have had to pay US$150 for the change plus whatever the difference in the flight ticket. i can take my time to relax, catch up on some sleep.

we played our last group stage match for the intramural soccer in the heavy rain last night. it was warmer than we thought, but we escaped with a solitary goal. so we won all of our 4 matches, and sadly, we ended up being ranked 7th, so we have to play again tonight for the playoffs. we didnt really interact with the referees last night, but somehow we got a sportsmanship rating of 3.0, which i thought was ridiculous considering we'd been so much harsher on the referees in our past 3 games and still got a 4.0 and 3.5 on them. and the fact that they failed to see an obvious infringement in the rules of soccer. its debatable if its a tackle not noticed, but for a goalkeeper to be out of boundaries and using his hands, that's not contestable. its an automatic redcard in soccer and ive seen it happen, both at a professional and amateur level. but i dont think it would have helped much anyway. we would have ended 6th at the most, and for us to skip tonight's match and be seeded automatically to the second round, we had to be ranked in the top 5.

i hope that we dont play tonight. most people have left home for thanksgiving and i hope that the opponents wont have enough players so that the match will be forfeited. i dont feel like playing in the rain like last night. not only cant you run properly, but ball control becomes a totally different problem.

alright, i guess im done for this entry. oh, before i leave, i saw this written on someone's bag at we were on our way heading out of Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

" ''Fo shizzle my nizzle' is a bastardization of 'for sure, my nigger' which is a bastardization of 'i agree with you whole-heartedly, my african american brother'."

i chuckled to myself silently.