hordes of people

rain got heavier and being kicked out of the buildings got more annoying

feel bad for those people whose faces got plastered.

not quite part of the protest. just found this amusing. flyers overlapping flyer after flyer. it was as thick as a textbook. almost cushion like.

cars honked as they past by. this was wednesday afternoon as i was trying to cross over to get frozen yoghurt.

when i was early to class one day. this is dwinelle where i have biochem. yes we are oldschool. chalkboards! there's 9 boards total so u can slide up and down, 3 on each panel. (seriously, who still uses chalkboards??!!)

this was just a third of the class. 500 cap.

tomorrow's the big game (cal vs. stanford). i dont want cal to lose but i have a feeling we will. we havent been playing well this season so no high hopes or anything. plus, the protest got in the way too. instead of prepping today, we were busy with protests. on a side note, the wheeler issue was at moments a protest with the cops. lol. think there is still the bonfire and tree cutting rally tonight. its a huge deal symbolic of the big game. stanford's mascot is a cardinal (ie tree i know lol) so yeah.

heading off to skyline again on monday for eyh. midterm on tuesday and new moon on wed! thanksgiving break starting thursday. yay 4 day weekend! history paper due after. boo. then down week and finals and im off to singapore and hong kong! alright, think thats it for now.

whose university? our university! (it's just stuck in my head after hearing it constantly for 3 days now)

so, the UC Regents board has approved of the 32 percent fee hike raising tuition cost to 10,000 which has caused outrage. earlier this semester, they increased it by 10 percent. on top of that, they're implementing furloughs and laying off people. so to get this issue out there, campuses organized a 3 day strike which got from bad to worse. (extremely brief summary here)

this morning, at 5am, protestors occupied wheeler hall and locked themselves in so basically no one could get in or out and classes were cancelled. i didnt have class in there at all so i thought i wouldn't be affected. plus, the previous strikes weren't that "invasive". they would just stay at sproul or the chancellor's building and protest around campus but not exactly disrupt classes but that was so not the case today.

everything was still normal when i got to school. got my coffee from starbucks. started to drizzle a little which i expected so i was trying to get into the building before it started to pour. got to class and around the same number of people showed up. lecture started and halfway through at 10.30ish, the fire alarm went off. a super loud fire alarm. well, i guess its to compensate for the big building. i knew immediately that it was the protestors who pulled it. i mean occupying a university hall is a big deal and they wouldnt just let the protest end there. they wanted to get as many peope to join them as possible so getting them out of class was the only way and whats better than the fire alarm. the sound of it still rings in my head. so we got kicked out of the building and it was raining making it all the more awesome. wheeler hall was already blocked off by cops who were dressed in riot suits. and a huge crowd surrounding the barricades or constantly trying to push it down as a matter of fact. stood around a lil to watch. i mean it is a once in a lifetime thing. rain got a lil heavier so i decided to go to VLSB and stay in the library till my discussion section at 1. had to walk around the picket lines which seriously blocked every creek and corner. found a "secret pathway" that was behind plants and had to jump down two stone platforms to get to VLSB. so much for an adventure. was in the library typing up nemo's email for 5 mins and that fire alarm went off too. great. went back into dwinelle since that alarm had stopped but before i could walk up the stairs to get to the front, the alarm went off AGAIN. so i just stood with my friend and watch them chant. lol. saw my GSI and we hung out for a bit deciding that there should still be discussion. our discussion was in dwinelle where my first class was and it wasnt going to be productive at all if the alarms kept going off. but since there was still an hour or so left, we decided to wait it out and see. while waiting outside and watching the protests, we could just hear alarms going off one after the other and peope walking in and out of the buildings. to add to the misery, it was pouring too. we stood under a big tree which was pretty helpful. yay trees. anyways, the alarms eventually stopped. they probably pulled every one there is. and we still manged to hold discussion. theres a midterm on tuesday so we all had to go just in case we missed out on anything. otherwise, i would gladly be going home. plus, i was meeting with my GSI for office hours too to clear questions. the picket lines were still everywhere so it was hard to get around.

finally went home at 3.40 and the protest were still ongoing. people still occupied the building. and negotiations were going on. lots of cops. there were so many of them that i think if a crime were to be committed outside of campus, they would go jail free since there was no one to arrest them. cops from all the nearby places were on campus keeping watch of the protest. so overall, it was a very long but interesting day. berkeley is known for its political stuff no doubt about that. would like to see something like this happen at NUS or NTU or something. haha. would be quite a sight or shocker compared to us. for us, if a protest of this scale occurs, people would immediately know its organized by berkeley so no surprise there. anyways, here's a few crappy quality videos taken with my phone.

dad got me this two dogs from germany from the brand nici. totally didnt expect this especiallys since he keeps saying that i should get rid of my stuffed toys. how contradicting. plus, most of my stuffed toys have sentimental values. i could never bear to give them away. i still want to get a glass cabinet to put all of them in instead of stuffing them in cardboard boxes which im sure they're in right now since we just moved and i told mom she need not unpack my stuff. sometimes, i think that my parents still treat me as a lil kid. like who still gets stuffed animals for their child? but i love them anyways. get me a stuffed toy especially a dog and i'll love you. instant love okay :P im a crazy dog person and i admit it. see even dad knows it. but sooner or later, i'll have to start sleeping on the floor while all the stuffed animals get my bed. see how big that dog is. probably the size of my pillow. I'm such a hero. I sacrificed my bed for them. (i'm getting slightly insane so don't mind me)

can't wait to get back to singapore now. 1 more month! but first, i need to get through this torturous midterm. worst class ever! but the professor now is a lot better though he needs to speak up. his teaching style is adorable though. going back to skyline tomorrow afternoon for eyh meeting. hope it wont take too long so i can get home and continue studying. so glad we get wednesday off since its veterans day. more time to study. oh yay.