Rutgers (Part II)

Sophomore year...

SC, Madden '07 and the Nintendo Wii

Starcraft was a big hit sophomore year among my roommates and myself. Mike, Joe and my other suitemate Josh along with myself would play almost on a nightly basis. We played use map settings maps for you Starcraft people out there. We played a map designed for six players but we believed we could beat it with four. We usually played in Joe and my room so we didn't have to move so many computers around, but one day we decided to all play in the living room. We got ourselves all setup and we started the game. We were on the last level and we were in a good state to finish. It was our best run yet, but before we could finish the game my laptop ran out of battery. I plugged in my external hard drive which is where my SC was installed for some reason but I didn't plug in my laptop and since SC takes up the whole screen I didn't see the low battery warning. In short, the game froze waiting for me, but I couldn't rejoin. They tried to finish without me, but we lost. We never played Starcraft together since that night. I singlehandedly destroyed our hopes to finish that map, along with our nightly ritual.

This was also the same year we were proud to welcome the brand new Nintendo Wii to our suite. Mike waited in front of Best Buy for hours on the bitterly cold November night before the release of the much anticipated new gaming console. The morning he came home with his new baby his roommate kicked it off the stand and it fell over onto ground. Not soon after that our friend, Dan, was holding the Wiimote ready to bowl his turn in WiiSports when we noticed he didn't have the ever so important strap around his wrist. We told him to put the strap on but he responded with "Don't worry guys, I got this." Immediately after he said this he swung with all his might forcing the Wiimote out of his grip and flew directly upwards smashing into the concrete ceiling of the suite, then plummeted back downwards to be smash again into the ground. Luckily last memory of the Wii that year wasn't quite as destructive. I woke up one morning to find Newman, one of our friends from upstairs, lying on the couch playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I never saw him leave that couch for a couple days if I recall correctly. He shifted positions once in a while but never really witnessed him getting up. I woke up in the morning and there he was on the couch already hard at work. I went about my day going to the dining hall, classes and whatever else I usually did but every time I came back to my suite there was Newman lying on the couch playing Zelda. At the end of the day I would brush my teeth and say goodnight to Newman on the couch with Wiimote at the ready as I passed him to get to my room. He stopped after a couple days and ended up never finishing the game. What a shame, but I guess it was a pretty good run.

Madden '07 was a huge hit at that time as well. All the suite guys in our year had it by one means or another. I remember Joe's computer was so slow the only way he could play was to turn the graphics down to the lowest setting so the football players looked like Lego people. My most memorable moment was in our Earth Systems class. There was a bunch of us and we would all have our laptop so we can play Madden in the lecture hall filled with 200+ students. Victor turned his laptop on and it made the Windows startup noise, so we told him to make sure he muted his laptop before he started up Madden. By the time he launched Madden, class had already started and the room was dead silent. At this time Victor's computer said on maximum volume "EA Sports, it's in the game!". While trying to hold in my hysterical laughter I told Victor to plug in his earbuds into the headphone jack before the main menu popped and the theme music started playing. He made it in time, but I'm pretty sure everyone in the lecture hall heard the EA Sports' tagline except for our professor for some reason. It's a classic story but Victor usually leaves the room before anyone starts its retelling

UFC Fight Night
The first couple weeks of Sophomore year was probably the most violent of all my time in college. My roommate was Joseph Wong and Michael Chan lived two doors down in the same suite. Both of them were big UFC and WE fans and every night Mike thought it would be a good idea to wrestle with Joe while he was quietly trying to study. Joe was always the studious one and Mike was always the instigator. One day, Mike accidental left his phone in our room, so Joe hid it and demanded a ransom. The ransom was that Mike could never wrestle with him again, but Mike would rather just get a new phone than do that. They ended up negotiating the truce period to be three weeks if I recall correctly. There was a lot of anticipation for the day the truce was to be lifted. Mike made a Facebook event to the "Mike Chan vs. Joe Wong UFC Match" in our living room. We made UFC posters with the silhouettes of their two faces staring each other down. There were probably 15-20 people that showed up that night to watch. We cleared the furniture out of the living room and people lined the walls holding couch cushions so the two fighters wouldn't smash into the cinder block walls. If you don't know Joe, he's a quiet guy. He doesn't like getting a lot of attention but everyone loved him, and our underground UFC fight night was his first exposure to Joe Wong famedom. One of our female friends walk around the room with a poster board over her head that read "Mike 'The Man' Chan" as Mike entered the room and she did likewise with a poster board reading "Joseph 'King Kong' Wong" as Joe enter the room. I don't really remember the match very well. All I remember was the finishing blow. Pretty much Joe held Mike's head and kneed him hard in the face. Joe released Mike as he stumbled back and fell to the ground where Joe quickly grappled him and got him into a choke-hold. Mike tapped out and the match was over. After it was all over Joe went into our room and slammed the door shut. I've never seen him that upset before and hopefully never will again. I was scared he was going to strangle me in my sleep because I helped Mike plan the event. If you've never experienced it, living in fear sucks. We ended up making apologies and now we laugh about the whole thing. "Mike Chan vs. Joe Wong", the fight of a lifetime that I'll never forget.

Rutgers (Part I)

I originally started this blog a couple weeks ago 30 minutes before my second to last exam as an undergraduate at Rutgers University. I decided to start a new five part series, one for each year, about some of my favorite memories at the state university of New Jersey. I hope you enjoy it.

Freshman year...

Taco Night
Mondays at the Busch dining hall was taco night. It was the only thing to look forward to on that first day back to class ever week. I always made myself a taco salad because I was always too lazy to make real tacos. My choice in beverages, which was standard at every meal, was at least two glasses of chocolate milk and at least two glasses of cranberry juice. I am salivating as I type. One taco night, after eating at the dining hall my friend Benedict and I were walking back to our dorm through a snow covered parking lot. I suddenly felt something welling up inside me. I stopped and threw up into the snow in the middle of an empty parking spot. I'm guessing it was all my taco night items of consumption turned scarlet red from the cranberry juice. All I did was laugh and walk back to the dorm. Soon after that I was feeling hungry again since I just lost my dinner and I thought about going back to the dining hall to get some more tacos, chocolate milk and cranberry juice.

All-nighter

I love and require a lot of sleep every night, so it's not often one can find me lacking it. Many college students can be found night after night with little to no sleep because they're study for a big exam the next day or working on a project that's due in a couple hours. I've only experienced one all night and here is my story. A bunch of my friends and myself were just hanging out and talking till around 5-6am. One of my friends, Bond, decided to just stay up till his class at 8am since by then sleeping would be almost pointless. The most logical thing for all of us to do at this point was to stay up with him. At 7am, we headed to the dining hall for a rare eating of breakfast. I love breakfast, but I love sleep more so I don't eat it that often. Afterward, we watched a chain of Saved by the Bell episodes until one-by-one we left for our class or fell asleep from exhaustion. I remember coming back from class feeling like a zombie and walking past my friend's rooms to find them out cold. I proceeded to my own room where I checked out for the rest of the afternoon. I never pulled an all-nighter again, but I have to say the one time I did pull one was a memorable one. I hadn't watched Saved by the Bell in years and I didn't study one bit either, which is fun all by itself.

The lockpick
I don't know why, but myself and a few friends got ourselves some really simple lockpicks during our freshman year. They had many applicable uses but most importantly we used them to open people's dorm rooms when they've locked themselves out. My friend, Amanda, lost her key somewhere between our dorm and the gym. She was determined to find the key and not have to pay the unreasonable fee to re-key her room door. Until then, she asked to use my lockpick as her "key" so she can at least get in her room. Eventually she became a pro at opening her door with the pick. Usually it takes me a couple minutes to get it right and get the cylinder to turn, but she was so good she could have her door open in seconds. I expected her to never find her key and end up having to pay for a re-keying at the end of the year, but about a month after she lost her key someone found it and turned it into the university housing. She got her key back, returned my lockpick and never paid a cent. The determination to not pay fees at its finest.