Grad week kickoff

This is me and my lovely roommate! We had a photo shoot last week with our friend, N, who happens to be a fantastic photographer and founder of the photo decal. There are a hundred more where this came from! Literally...

I just sat through an exciting five hours of UC Berkeley General Commencement. Does sarcasm come through in my blog posts? No?

J and I kicked off this momentous day by running down College early in the morning in our gowns and dresses to retrieve her ID. Which no one checked. No one even looked at our tickets, which we had to buy for $8, for ourselves. Then we stood in line, which started at Edwards Stadium but wrapped all the way to Sproul Plaza. Can you say, ridiculous? A procession of 1600 graduates takes about 3 hours to seat!

It was cold and so the dress I bought from shopping in SF yesterday with my senior girlfriends was hidden under the billowy black gown and also a cardigan. Yeah, I wore a grandma sweater to commencement. At least I was warm. On a side note, it was perfect photo-taking weather! No sun glare or shadows. IV-ers and I took photos to keep ourselves occupied. This would be the beginning of many hours of trying to keep ourselves occupied.

The procession itself was uninteresting; I don't think parents really paid attention to the spit-fire announcing of the graduates' names. Or, maybe they tried, but unfortunately just couldn't catch it in time. On the name cards, they ask you to spell out your name phonetically. I debated between "KONS-stans Chen" or just leaving it normally, and in the end I just figured you'd have to be a sub-literate to mispronounce my name. The phonetic spelling might even confuse the reader. I was right about my own, but J's last name was pronounced "Low" and J's was "Wang." Obviously incorrect.

During the keynote speaker's speech on technology (since it was Qualcomm founder Paul Jacobs--what a forgettable name, I keep having to Google it), I played Boggle on J's iPhone and beat his high score repeatedly. I even dozed off for a bit and woke up to the official photographer snapping a picture of our row. Excellent.

J and I left the field right after an unceremonious recession in which no one told us to move our tassels from the right to the left, and got lunch at La Burrita. I think unceremonious is a good word to describe today in general.

I think there were a number of reasons why I didn't quite take this commencement seriously. One, my parents weren't here at my request (they are coming to my IB grad tomorrow morning!). Two, it was freaking five hours long, three of which were spent frolicking along the track at Edwards Stadium. Three, it hasn't quite hit me that graduating means a big, big life change. For now, it only means getting prettied up and wearing a ridiculous robe with a mortarboard.

The end!

Now, on to packing up my apartment and fulfilling my Hospital duties. I'm thinking of stepping down as probation lead and not having to deal with administrative things. I can't help but think that when people say "I like working with people," that they're lying. Anyways that's a different story for another time. I have to move all of my stuff out before my dad leaves for Taiwan, which is sooner than I thought. So everything has to be out of my apartment in the next two days! Should I post stuff to misc-list? Am I allowed to? Tell me if you want to haggle for any of the following: standing lamp, desk lamp, desk fan, bookshelf, bed+box spring, white loveseat (free!)...

:)