Here's a shot of Ted & Tracy from the Metreon back in the day when they had a "digital postacrd" thing you could use to send pictures of yourself to random people.

So Tracy's the second or third person I met during welcome week before my freshman year at Cal. I think it was during a fire drill that a bunch of us from La Loma were herded into the parking lot across the street (it was raining too, else we would've just been herded outside into the street), and I ran into her. Then I started telling her about all the people who were living on her floor...that was interesting.

Ted went to high school with me, and so you could say I've known him since the days of our English 2 Honours class. He moos a lot and lived next door to Tracy a few years ago. Yup.

Tracy shows off her cooking skillz in the kitchen. No wait, she's not cooking....what the???

And here's Tracy sitting in the only place in our house she dares to: in front of the heater vent where it's warm enough (assuming the heater's on, of course).

This is how Ted and I play chess. We're real mature, in case you hadn't noticed.

This is Melissa looking a little distressed while pulling an all-nighter in my room during the last night of the Spring 1999 semester

So Melissa is one of the first people I met at Berkeley...I think it was at one of those really lame welcome week activities that I met her and showed off my geekness by hooking her up with 'net in her dorm room. Ever since, it's been an e-mail fiendish relationship with the occasional random meeting for food or Star Wars or something...

Here's Melissa sitting in the window of my dorm room at the end of the Spring 1999 semester. Doesn't it look like she's thinking really really hard about something?

And don't forget this shot of Melissa lounging in a chair. She said she was staring at her feet, which were resting on a table.

These days, Melissa can be found in New York, studying some form of sociology at Columbia in grad school, where she just completed her Masters in Spring 2004. In another two or three years (it's 2004 as I add this line of text), she hopes to emerge with a Ph.D in hand, a million publications to her name, bright visions of changing the future, and a plan to make the world a better place.

Here's a shot of Melissa and me in my apartment after she got back from London for the Fall 2001 semester. Man, she's got one hell of a British accent if you catch her at the right time...and she's way too easily amused by those blinky bouncy balls that I got from the career fair....

Holming & Masato in Spens-Black, 608 right before we went to go watch Austin Powers 2.

Ah, the people you meet when you take summer school. Both of them lived in 204 Norton Hall during the summer of 1998, and we all had way too much fun blowing bubbles and stuff. Holming was my roommate during my two years of grad school (while he finished out his undergrad), and these days, Masato works for Toshiba in Japan, and Holming is studying Chemistry in grad school at Northwestern.

Holming wearing a cow hat. Mooooooo!

And this is Nam not sleeping on BART one day. If you look closely, you can see reflections of cows and sheep and drosophila dancing around in her eyes...

Nam was one of my residents way back in the day when I was an RCC, and the inside joke was that I was stalking one or both of her roommates. I'll let you be the judge of that one. She should also be given a lot of credit for pulling the optimist out of the pessimist shell that dominated my life in 1999. Anyway, since then, she's become one of my fellow junk-food goobers for things like cheesecake, Krispy Kremes, and In-N-Out (but wait, she's a vegeterian...huh?), and when she's not genetically altering drosophila, she's can probably be found working too hard.

Here Nam got her hands on my d-cam and decided it would be funny to take a picture of herself. Hell, I thought it was funny too...hahaha!

These days, she's a grad student at Emerson College (one of the millions of universities in the Boston area) studying creative writing, or something like that.

Lily and Robert on the beach in Carmel at night.
(photo shamelessly stolen off their web site).

Lily is yet another person I know from having taken summer school in 1998; she wasn't a freshman at Cal until I was a senior...that tells you just how early she took them summer classes at Berkeley. What possessed her to do that, you may ask. I don't know...I don't know.

Robert is a UC Davis alum and a fellow geek/engineer/A's-fan. Admittedly, I only know him through Lily, and can't tell you much about his non-Lily-related life. But he's a pretty cool character overall.

These days, they are engaged to be married (to each other, duh). Lily is preparing to begin a Masters in Education/Teaching Credential Program at Stanfurd in Fall 2004, and Robert is preparing to start life in the hell that is an engineering-related graduate school somewhere in northern California come Fall 2004.

Here Hanching's head is trapped in one of those expandable/collapsable ball thingies they sell at toy stores.

Hanching is the guy from the University of Illinois that I met at the EE Prospective Grad Student Visit Day thing in April 2001 who remarked, "I've never seen so many Asians in one place!" He was my EE245, 240, and 247 project partner, and I managed to get him addicted to Penguin Mints during those MEMS lectures.

Anyway, go mess with his web page counter here

These days, Hanching is the only one of us "dull minds" who left the Bay Area -- he works at Analog Devices in Boston and lives with his girlfriend Sherry who's a PhD student at MIT (which means he'll be in Boston forever).

This would be Rayleen, the former EECS major A-Phi-O cult member who saw the light and is now in IEOR. She shared the madness of IEOR162 with Anne and me in Fall99.

Rayleen & Anne were my project parners in IEOR162. The funny thing is that neither Anne nor I were IEOR majors, and even Rayleen herself was a convert from EECS. But anyway, Rayleen was one of the few people I remember from my Physucks 7A class my freshman year, who then showed up in a few other of my classes, even after she switched to IEOR; Anne, on the other hand, is a genius who graduated after only four semesters...the insanity.

Here's a shot of Anne making a face. How'd I get her to make this face? Why, I asked her to give me her family's secret cheesecake recipe. Did she give it to me? Nope. Meanie. :)

These days, Anne is a grad student at UC Berkeley, pursuing a Ph.D in bioengineering. Her office at the LBL doesn't have much of a view, but being on top of the hill makes her feel important. Rayleen works as some sort of "analyst" (if I remember correctly) in downtown San Francisco and gets to take the ferry to work everyday to get there from beautiful Marin.

Sherylen was one of the interns I met during my summers at AMD during my undergraduate years. Despite my initial paranoia that she was really a stalker, I've since learned that she's harmless and even presents a refreshing contrast to my usual geeky/working-stiff/perfectionist self (especially during times of stress when I just need to be reminded to breathe and take a step back from everything).

This is Sherylen and me sitting at a table
(how's that for a descriptive caption?)

These days, she's finishing out a degree at CSUMB, with the ultimate goal of (1) getting the hell out of school (ah, I know the feeling...), (2) getting some sort of stability in a job, and (3) getting into an MBA program, so that she can (4) get an MBA and start bossing people around and raking in the big bucks.

Sherylen in a bucket hat.
I can't really tell if she's trying to make a face or not though....

And for grins, this here is a headshot that could almost pass for one of them school pictures that they made us take in elementary school, if not for (1) my limited photoshopping capabilities on my laptop's touchpad, and (2) my limited photoshopping capabilities in general because I don't really know as much about photoshop as I like to tell people I do. =P

This is Shirley and Yolanda with a beautiful San Francisco Bay view behind them at Arlene's wedding in Sausalito, CA.

So Yolanda lived across the hall from me during my sophomore year, and came up with the "MooCrew, part deux" name for our CS152 group. Shirley is perhaps one of her oldest friends from high school (which sounds strange, considering that she was always two or three years younger than everyone else in her classes...freak)

And here's Shirley blowing bubbles

These days, both Yolanda and Shirley apparently work on high-security, top-secret government projects at their respective places of "work," (Boeing and Lockheed Martin, respectively) so much so, that they can't tell me anything about what they do.

My sister is about a year older than I am, and is now a fourth-grade teacher. Man, that makes me feel old. Anyhow, as you can imagine, this means I've known her for my whole life. Duh.

And this is a picture of my sister. Even in college, they apparently make you take senior portraits...much capitalism exists in the photo industry, I tell ya.

Here's a class picture. My sister's the tall one in the picture.