Last Leg

Jul. 4th, 2007 02:19 pm
aggienaut: (Default)

   Yesterday I found a ride down to LA via craigslist. The driver and other random craigslist passenger were both pretty cool. The eight hour drive really felt like nothing after all the travelling I've been doing.
   They were only going as far as LA, but I had them drop me off at Matt "Papa Smurf" Wilkerson's place. He was still in class but he had some guy sleeping on his couch. Him and I walked down to this place where you could get a big icecream sandwich on fresh cookies for $1.25. That was pretty cool. Papa Smurf caught up with us there and then we went back to the smurfcave.
   Swati "Swat Team" Srivistava caught up with us there and we all hung out while we waited for Matt to get off work. Work for Matt mainly consisted of sitting on his couch, with occasional phone calls from old people, and for this he's paid $13/hr! (Tech support). My old friend Michelle Thompson from high school happens to live near there now and so she came over and hung out with us for a little bit.
   I tried to convince Mara to join us, as she also lives in the area... but she had to stay home with her cats ("they're very depressed!").

   Eventually Matt and I continued on to Orange County in the smurfmobile.


Picture of the Day


Nevada, last Friday morning


   I uploaded a bunch more pictures, mostly of the road -- so you can see what our view was really like most of the time!


   Anyway, my boss is having a bbq at his place in Laguna Beach, I think I'm gonna head over there.

aggienaut: (helicopters (pink))

   So yesterday I went up to visit the dashing Mr Matt "Papa Smurf" Wilkerson up at UCLA. It turns out he lives across the street from where my dad lived when he went to UCLA, and across a different street from where my mom did (its an intersection see) .. and just two or three buldings down from where I stayed there when I visited the UCLA Swedish department. Clearly this intersection is the cultural epicenter of the world.

   Anyway, shortly after we got there, Matt's roommate Arya came in and announced he was going to the UCLA Democrats vs UCLA Republicans debate, since he was speaking there. Matt & I decided to tag along as it was early and we didn't have anything else in particular to do. There we rendezvoused with Swati "Swat Team" Srivistava.
   While I'm a fan of intellectual discourse, I am not generally a fan of campus debates like this. Usually both sides manage to completely avoid eachothers points while hurling criticisms at eachother and everyone comes out a loser. This time didn't really appear to be an exception, although it didn't help that the moderator, the President of the UCLA Dems, frequently let "15 second response"s go on for as much as 45 seconds. I couldn't discern whether he was using such shoddy time keeping to his team's advantage or was just generally taking a lax approach to moderation, but I didn't think it boded well for the seriousness of the debate.

   We departed the debate as soon as Arya had spoken. Later we met up with Afshin Haghgoo, who had also staffed with Swati, Matt & I at AMPAC.
   We went to a party down the street, which happened to be in the same building I had stayed at when I last visited UCLA (!). There we ran into Nick "Luxurious Hair" Anduze, who had staffed with us at SDHSMUNC 2007 as well as been in Mara & I's committee at AMPAC 2006, as well as of course, been on MTV's Date My Mom.
   Also present was the Secretary-General of the upcoming UNA-USA MUN Conference that Matt's chairing and Swati is the Chief of Staff for. Incidently it has come to light that Swat Team has chaired no less than SEVENTEEN (17) conferences THIS YEAR. I previously thought my 23 chaired conferences was a pretty unassailably large number, but she's well-nigh caught up to me in a single year!! And to think it all started when she was a wee high school delegate in my committee at the first SDHSMUN Conference in 2004. I'm all for lots of MUN and all but.. someone should hold an intervention here!! (=

   Also I called my former roommate Grodecki, who lives in the area, but she was busy with a "Wrap Up Party" since they just finished shooting a TV series she was working on or something. Damn people and their real jobs.


Random Trojan Tangent
   In the morning I hopped on over to UCLA arch-rival USC. Now to go on a quick tangent about USC, USC's mascot is the "Trojans" right. There are also several high schools and such with the mascot of the "Trojans." What are Trojans famous for? GETTING TRICKED! That is ALL. They are the most famously bamboozled people in history! And academic institutions find it fashionable to portray them as role models?
   What else comes to mind when you think of "trojans?" Thats right, objects which nefariously insert soldiers within otherwise impregnable city walls with disasterious results. Which of course, is a brilliant thing to name a brand of condoms after, no?
/ Random Trojan Tangent


   Anyway, some 15 or so members of Phi Alpha Delta UC Davis had come down to tour USC and UCLA law schools, so I joined them for USC. By the time of their UCLA tour however I would be well on my way down to San Diego for the weekend. This evening the Davis delegation may join the so-cal delegations at the formal hosted by Cal State Northridge, which is being attended by most of the other so cal chapters.


   After USC I set forth to journey back down to my HQ in MV.
   However, I happened to get a call back for the paralegal position I had applied to in Long Beach. "When can you come up for an interview?" they asked "well, I'll be passing Long Beach in 15 minutes" says I. So I randomly took a job interview detour, and I think it actually went pretty well.


   Finally, Mara and I met up at MV HQ and carpooled on down to San Diego. And now I'm here.

AMPAC 2007

Apr. 16th, 2007 02:19 pm
aggienaut: (Rogue UN)

   This weekend we had Picnic Day up at Davis. It is the yearly open-house of the university and is generally a marathon day of revelry for most of the students. Previous to this year I've attended it every year for the past six years.

   However, this weekend also happened to be the weekend of the American-Pacific (AMPAC) Model United Nations conference, of which I was the Secretary-General. As such I unfortunately missed this year's picnic day.


   Anyway, as Secretary-General, I was, along with the Governor-General Sameer Kanal, in charge of running the conference, so it was a different experience than my usual chairing of committees. I definitely preferred chairing committees, and for next year's AMPAC, provided it is not the same day as Picnic Day, I will be back to chairing a committee.

   I had been in charge of putting together this year's staff, so, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, many of my favourite MUN personalities were with us this weekend. Swati "Swat Team" Srivistava and Matt "Papa Smurf" Wilkerson made me proud running Security Council, and I was very glad I took Matt's recommendation on Afshin "Afro-sheen" Haghgoo.
   On the subject of nicknames, we had two female Alex's that needed to be differentiated. Eventually, as they were from Ukraine and Guatamala, respectively, someone decided they should be referred to as "Ukraine-alex" and "Guatamala-alex." This of course quickly becomes Ukrainelex and Guatalex. Guatalex (pronounced Guata-lex) stuck well, but Ukrainelex sounded like a pharmaceutical company. Anyway, Ukrainelex mutated to Ukrinelex and then Ukrinex, and finally settled on Equinox.


How Sameer flustered Guatalex's Boyfriend
   One of the most memorable moments from the conference was a certain prank Gov-Gen Sameer and I played on Guatalex. As usual, when it came down to administer conference evaluations to her committee, Sameer and I took over the dias and Guatalex and her vice chair Julie were sent from the room. It so happened that Alex had had a computer she was keeping track of things on, and had an internet connection, and, it turns out, was signed in to a chat program.
   Shortly after we took over we got a messege from her boyfriend. Sameer and I looked at eachother and quickly knew what we absolutely had to do -- we had a moral obligation to pretend to be her and carry on a conversation with her boyfriend!!! And he certainly wasted no time bringing us hilarious results. The entire conversation went more or less like this:
Him: Hey
Alex(us): hey honey
Him: I'm so horny (!!)
Alex(us): Me too, being in committee all day makes me so flustered!
Him: When I visit you this evening do you think we can get one of the hotel rooms to ourselves for a little bit?
Alex(us): I'll see what I can do ;)
   As you can see, the lulz certainly were forthcoming! Anyway, we left the conversation on the screen when Guatalex resumed control of the committee, in order to alarm her properly. Apparently as soon as she noticed she very abruptly excused herself and hunted down Sameer and punched him several times in the arm. (= Anyway, her boyfriend showed up that evening and I teased her mercilessly. She claims she didn't despoil any of our rooms.



   Other than that, another highlight of the conference for me was guest-speaking. When a committee wants to get the perspective of a country or entity that is not represented in the committee, we either get someone representing said county from another committee to guest speak, or have a staff member to represent said entity.
   Both the Security Council, and our Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)committee had the subject of Somalia, and I have been following events there myself, so I guest spoke in both committees on the subject. In the Security Council I spoke as a representative of Ethiopia, regarding our continued support of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and military action against the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). About an hour later I spoke to the OIC as a representative of the ICU, regarding our resistance to the Ethiopian invaders and the puppet TFG government. It was quite fun and I got a very extensive amount of positive feedback from the committee about how much they appreciated my doing that.


Crisis!
   Friday night we had a middle-of-the-night Security Council crisis. For this our staff had to batten down and start preparing at 11pm, by 1:30am we were marauding the halls pounding on delegates doors, and shortly thereafter we got it going. A few delegates snuck off but most were there until it ended with a return to the status quo at around 5am I believe.
   As to the crisis itself, basically Israeli special forces conducted an operation in Iran and discovered evidence of an advanced nuclear weapons programme. However some of the force was discovered. So from the delegates perspective it started with Iran parading captured Mossad agents and protesting the incident, however this was quickly followed by news of Israeli airstrikes against the discovered weapons sites. There was then military build-ups on both sides and I believe nothing but negotiations for the next several hours. I don't know, I left at 3am.
   I know night SC crises are common, but I personally completely fail to see what is so exciting about being awake all night and doing committee while everyone else is either having fun or catching up on sleep. Maybe I'm just a scrooge. Anyway it left me running the conference the next morning with half my staff (and the Governor-General) still asleep until noon.


Picture of the Day


I just think this is an awesome picture. Thats the OIC Director and Chair in the background, with Somalia (TFG) front left

aggienaut: (gavel)

   Justice may be sweet, but the "scrambled eggs" at Orange County's Central Justice Centre taste absolutely terrible.


   The weekend before last was St Patricks Day. I hate St Patricks Day. Its a day the Irish are stereotyped in the most outlandish fashions, and people can frequently be foundn attempting terrible terrible Irish accents that grate upon my ears.
   Anynway, I was in San Diego with Kristy & co. We went to a bar called O'Hungrys that sells beer by the yard (50oz!) and half yard (25oz). There we were amazed to see an individual chug an entire half yard in one go.
   Shortly, the individual who did this looked over at us and exclaimed "Kris!!?"
   Turns out it was my RA* from freshman year!

   *I don't know how standard the terminology is but RA = Resident Advisors; the people who enfore the zero tolerance on drinking in the dorms policy.


   This past weekend I was down in San Diego again, this time for the PAXMUN San Diego High Schools Conference (SDHSMUNC). There I was chair of the League of Arab States, and when not in committee got to hang out with such illustrious individuals as Matt "Papa Smurf" Wilkerson, "Marky Mark" Edwards, Swati Srivistava, and the legendary Vern Gill. All of these people will also be at my own conference in mid-April, but Marky Mark only because there's a meeting of all the Governor-Generals (too crafty for me to trick him into staffing!).
   Additionally there were of course other staff that I approve of, but I can't roll-call everyone. I thought I'd note however that Nicholas "Luxurious Hair" Anduze, who was Iraq in my AMPAC committee last year was on staff (he's also famous for being on MTV's "Date My Mom")
   Anyway my committee had only 11 people in it, which kind of sucked, but it kept moving. Eventually, trade negotiations with Iran broke down and many members of the Arab League were incensed by the arrogant attitude the Iranian diplomat displayed to them (represented by Swati), so the Arab League declared war on Iran en bloc. But then Swati came in and gave them a thorough lecture on why they shouldn't do that (one delegate later recalled "we got served!") ... which in my opinion rather spoiled the fun. Another amusing quote towards the end of committee was "All we've done here is reject pleas of help from our brethren!"

   Anyway I feel like there was probably more I wanted to report but I don't recall it at the moment. Next up, AMPAC, April 12th-15th!! (Picnic day, unfortunately )= )

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