[2004.04.30 2359h]

   [cgame] legend of the green dragon
   [music] frou frou \\ let go
   [tlvsn] the apprentice
   [vgame] phantasy star online episode iii: c.a.r.d. revolution [nintendo gamecube]

apparently, there was a fire on the stanford campus recently, right
outside the dorm i lived in two years ago.  i heard it damaged some of the
exterior of the dorm, as well as some personal belongings in one room.
from what i gathered when i was looking at the damage from outside, it
seems as if the room containing the damaged personal belongings was only a
few doors down from my old room.

one of my cousins got married last weekend.  my nuclear family flew out to
attend his marriage ceremony.  on the first leg of the trip heading out, i
sat directly in front of a crying baby.  i don't know how loud babies
usually cry on flights, as since it appears that i have been lucky enough
to not be on many flights with crying babies, but this baby cried so
loudly that the flight attendants handed out free headsets to a number of
rows surrounding the baby, probably in the hopes that the inflight movie
would prove to be a suitable distraction from the baby's cries.

i wasn't interested in the movie, since i had a far more interesting math
problem to work on at the time, but i did appreciate the gesture.  the
surprising thing was that even with the crying of the baby, i was able to
make quite a bit of headway on my problem, and was even able to sleep
soundly about two hours into the flight.  in fact, from my experience, i
didn't think that the crying baby was really that much of an annoyance.

during the wedding reception, the majority of my cousins in attendance got
a poker game going in which the two losers would have to dance together on
the dance floor.  unfortunately for me, i was one of the losers.  luckily,
my cousin who was the other loser was a good sport, and although she
danced well, she was willing to work with my ineptitude in an attempt to
teach me something.

i played what i believe was my first full game of jenga later during the
reception.  the wooden blocks stacked up to what i thought was a rather
high stack for a first game of jenga, but i ended up crashing the whole
structure when i placed the block i removed from the middle of the stack
back onto the top of the tower.  apparently, i'm not very good at either
poker or jenga.

later that night, at my uncle's house, my brother and i attempted to teach
ourselves how to play the guitar.  one of my cousins had an old guitar in
the basement that she once knew how to play, but apparently she had
forgotten most of it by now, including what note each of the guitar
strings was supposed to be tuned to.  so we tried tuning the guitar to
some arbitrary notes, and attempted to play some very simple songs and
motifs.  although i am still very far away from being able to claim that i
can play the guitar, at least i can now say that i can pluck the guitar
strings to make a noise that sounds vaguely recognizable, which is better
than what i could say before.

on the flight back, my backpack was searched, as it often is, as since i
seem to be able to cram an inordinate amount of stuff into it.  this time
around, the person who searched my backpack found my can of wd-40, which i
carry around in case my bike ever needs lubrication.  it was eventually
confiscated, as since wd-40 is flammable, which i forgot about when i was
double checking my backpack to make sure i didn't put any nail clippers in
some obscure pouch.  happily, though, they allowed me to keep my set of
allen wrenches and my pair of pliers.

it seems as if whenever i write about an event, i usually never talk about
the properties of the event that most people seem to want to talk about.
for example, when i was talking about the wedding, i didn't mention
anything about what song was played at the couple's first dance, what was
for dinner, how i felt at seeing my relatives, or who caught the bouquet.  
for those of you who are interested, the couple danced to u2's all i want
is you, i had a shrimp dish for dinner, although there was also a beef
dish, i was happy to see my relatives, and i don't think anyone caught the
bouquet, since i don't think a bouquet was thrown, unless i missed it.

instead, i end up talking about the unusual occurrences during the event,
and perhaps even about happenings that are only vaguely related to the
event.  for example, i spent quite a bit of time talking about games
played during the reception and some crying baby that wasn't even part of
the wedding, at least as far as i know.  i've been told that this is what
makes my writing interesting, but i feel guilty for omitting details that
people involved in the event may wish were also said in this entry.

alas, it doesn't seem like my writing style in this diary can be changed
much, as since i try to write about what random things i might be thinking
at the time, and usually, i don't think much about what ordinarily happens
at events.  however, one can probably assume that if i didn't write much
about an event itself, then nothing unusually bad happened.  for example,
if you are one of the organizers of the wedding, you can be happy knowing
that i found nothing notably horrid about the event, and found it a very
enjoyable gathering.