"Kickass" is one way to describe yesterday.

Saturday was the second day of the water polo tournament. Remember in the last post where I said that I thought that we'd be playing easier teams now? A little bit of that mixed with us playing a helluva lot better contributed to 3 wins (all our games) and a rank of 1st place for that day. What makes things even more interesting is that that people who were suppposed to come be subs didn't show up, so we had just enough players to qualify as a team and be eligible play, which also meant that everyone would have to play ironman (playing the entire game without ever coming out for a break) all 3 games. I've played ironman only once before, and I already thought it was tiring as hell. Now we'd all have to do it 3 times in a day. And since we won each game, our next one was only about half an hour later. Ironman + 3 games half an hour apart = tired pissless. Yet we still came out on top.

First game against Eastlake was average... all the way up until the middle of third quarter when Grant got ejected for the 3rd time, which meant a kickout from the rest of the game. That's when things got a technical. And since we only had enough players for one team, that meant that we had to play man-down for the rest of the game. Before Grant's kickout, the score was something like 9 - 6, us. At the end of the game, we won 11- 9.

Our second game didn't start off to well. By half time we were down 4 - 0. But in the end we won 6 - 4. We didn't let them score any goals and we ourselves scored 6. Can you say underdog?

Nothing particulary interesting happened in our third game.

Right after the tournament and feeling good, I went back to MC where the band tournament was going on and I had to work.

2 hours before my shift starts someone finds me and is like, "We need you working NOW." Less than 10 minutes into the job and I was reminded by how hectic the whole thing is. They were short of workers and the entire show schedule had been pushed back 15 minutes, but not all of the band directors had gotten word, so our job was to find them (which was a challenge in itself) and inform them of the update. Brings back memories from last year when I had the task of finding all the bands as they arrived, greeting them, and then escorting them to the start of the parade line. Everything was supposed to be very meticulous and planned out, but things started getting frustrating when busses were late, busses were parking in the wrong spots (making them harder than they already were to find), and the bands were running off somewhere onto campus to warm up. Luckily, my job this year wasn't anything near as frustrating.

I spent most of my time there hanging out with Melissa, Mallory, Ellen, Girish, a few other orchestra volunteers, Chris, Wes, Patty, Nauzli, Ann, and a lot of other people which too lazy to recall right now.

I got home at 11:30, and fell into bed exhausted. It was a good day.

What a great way to start off a day without school: a dentist appointment at 8 AM in the morning. And after that visit to my dentist, I'm reminded of why so many people fear going to the dentist (and according to Mr. Raskin, 40% of the US population has never visited the dentist). Here's a little snippet of my time there while getting my teeth cleaned...

Me - *flinches*
Dentist - "Haha, relax a little. You're way to tense."
Me - "Wahikiahhuhsayil (transtlates into 'Well, it kinda hurts a little')."
*10 minutes later*
Dentists - "Alright, you can go rinse your mouth out. Here's a cup of water to do it with".
Me - *Rinses my mouth out*

And I swear, what came out my mouth when I spit the water out was literally pure dark red. It took about 6 rinses to get all the blood out. Later on a nurse says to me, "You're teeth are in great condition, but you're gums maybe a little sensitive because you were bleeding a little." Maybe its just me, but I don't remember any of my past dentists ever being so harsh with that little vibrating needle thingy thats used to clean teeth.

When I came home, I completeded another section of my online driver's ed, talked with Ann online, and then..

I walked to Barnes and Noble. Its been a while since I've had time to go to Barnes and Noble, buy some coffee from Starbucks, and just get cozy with a book in one of their big, comfy, squishy chairs. So that's exactly what I did. With a grande pumpkin spice latte and a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, I spent a good 2 and half hours at the bookstore. On the way home I went into In-N-Out and got some lunch.

Then I got ready for the water polo tournament at Granite Hills High. We hit a bit of traffic on the way up, but made it there in time.

Our first game against Torrey Pines sucked ASS. We got raped. I forget the score, but it was a lot to a little. We should have done better, considering we were pretty much even with Torrey Pines the last 2 times we played them. In that game, I got high praise for an extraordinary pick that I made on one of the Torrey Pines guy that enabled us to score. But in that same game was an event of complete and utter embarrassment for me.

I got a fast break down the pool and the guy guarding me was waaaay behind. Me, Grant, and the guy defending Grant were the only ones there, so it was essentially 2 on 1. Our goalie throws the ball across the entire pool, landing the ball right in front of me and setting me up with a perfect chance to score (since no one's guarding me and I'm just a few meters from the goal). Then I don't know what happened. I lost faith in myself, and decided that I wouldn't have been able to make it, so I pass the ball to Grant, who's guy is still guarding him closely so the defender easily steals the ball away. Perfect chance for me to make a goal, and my confidence falters right at that moment, screwing up a goal that we could of had. No, would have had. Nice timing. I can never hear the coach screaming at us when we're in the pool, but at this moment I could hear very clearly everyone in the stands laughing. I don't even know what I lost confidence. In practice, I totally pwn at shooting.

In our next game against University City, by the end of third quarter we were down 10 - 1. Didn't look good at all. In the fourth quarter, we start hauling ass and score 5 goals and prevent them from scoring any. Final score was 10 - 6 them, but this is maybe the funnest game of polo I've ever played. I don't remember another time when I heard such loud applause coming from the the audience as the teams got together to shake hands. And after the game, we were making friends, talking, laughing, with the other team. Good times, good times. Good game.

Tournament continues tomorrow morning. The bright side to losing the first 2 games is that we're almost guaranteed to win the ones we play tomorrow because now we play all the crappy teams. But then again, if you think about it, we were fairly put into the same group as those teams... so who knows? I've got hope, though. Then MC band tournament where I will be working as an usher.

I need to pee.

As you can see, I've completely redone this place. Well, actually, I didn't "redo" anything. I just did away with the rest of the Michael Pages except the blog and changed its layout a little. The rest of the site was pretty much useless cause the only thing I ever updated was the blog, and thats what anyone ever came to read, anyway. Sooo everything else is gone now. Hopefully this will allow me post more often in one specific location rather than spread my updates throughout an entire website (Hah, like I was doing that, anyways).

In other news, its fucking freezing.

And in even more news, the Novice water polo tournament tomorrow and Saturday. Saturday is also the MC Band Tournament which I will be working at as an usher in the evening.

Michael Sun out.

This is a test. Enjoy.

New layout?

I'm planning on renovating this place. Stay tuned.

Ahhh, what an action packed weekend(?!). I guess you could say it started last Friday in 4th period humanities when we were doing classical allusion stories. My partner David wasn't there, and the class finished the presentations all the way up to the one right before ours. Whew. I would have had to go up by myself for the presentation if they had gotten to us.

After school during waterpolo practice, after the initial 200 meter swim warmup, Kat was like, "Who wants to go play waterpolo.. but on land?" Everyone was out of the pool quick as lightening and over at the lower field. We played for about an hour in topless in our speedos and pants. Kat was like, "hmm, what should the winners get..?" Grant responded, "How bout a kiss... from you?" (for people who still don't know, Kat is the hot waterpolo coach). Then she said, "Eww... first off, thats digusting. Second, its illegal." Then Wes goes, "Mmm... how bout a kiss... from Anthony( one of the other coaces)..?" Eventually, we decided that the losers would have to walk into a girls volleyball game donned only in their speedo and with the name of a volleyball girl printed across their chest. But later when we realized that some of us actually wanted to do this, we changed it so that the losers would have to wear their speedos on the outside of their normal clothes on monday at school. The game was fun as hell, and the two teams tied 7-7. To the coaches, that meant that we all lost, so we all have to come in speedos on monday. Anyone who doesnt do it, all it takes is another person to report them to the coaches and he'll be swimming the entire practice next week. After the game, we came back to the pool and scrimmaged, also fun as hell. This was by far the most fun I've ever had at waterpolo practice.

I woke up Saturday morning to go to PSAT's at school. Holy hell, there were a lot of people there. Its never boring when you have Kevin, Lilly, Eamon, Shea, and Jimmy around you... and thats exactly who I had around me during the testing. The testing itself was so-so. Highlight of that was watching Kevin take a piss on the school bathroom floor. Atleast I got to miss CYO for it. Later that night, I went to Fashion Valley and to the Apple Store. With $250 from my savings in hand, I bought myself a green iPod mini. This is after months of longing for one and saving up. Early Merry Christmas to myself.

Damn, today was a day of literally nonstop work. My alarm woke me up at 6 AM cause I was suppose to have driving lessons with my dad, but upon hearing the rain outside I thought "hell yes" and went back to bed. I woke up an hour later at 7 and finished my math homework before breakfast. Then had breakfast. And spent the next hours cramming for Chinese school and my week's worth of homework for it. I really need to get my ass into gear in that class. I failed the first two tests with 59%'s, and have a C only because she lets us makeup our tests to get 50% of what we missed back. Still, I'm not gonna settle for a C. After Chinese school I came home, did more homework, and spent the rest of my night studying for the AP art history test I have tomorrow. What fun.

ACTION PACKEDNESSASDFKLJASDF?!!(*!!

Yesterday after practice we had a spaghetti dinner at Vasco's house. It was pretty cool... a nice time in the middle of the week just to chill with the other people on the waterpolo team. It was overall pretty fun. Today we had a game at Poway. JV got raped. Varsity lost, but not nearly as bad as JV did. And for a moment, it seemed like novice almost had a chance. After watching our other 2 teams lose, we were all pretty pissed. Especially since our opponent was Poway, MC's biggest rival. Novice was pumped as hell to win this thing, and by half time it looked like we had a chance with the score being 4-3, us being 4. But the next thing you know, the game is tied, and then things start going downhill for us from there. What personally pissed me off a lot was that I had the chance to make a perfect shot: a few meters from the cage with no one covering me. I throw the ball aiming for a corner, and it hits the damn outside rim of the cage and bounces off. This is only the second goal I've attempted in the entire season. I made the first one, this one was bad. In my opinion, this is the best we've ever played. Final score was 10-8, Poway. So all 3 of our teams had lost. No one was in too good of a mood. Walking back to the front of the school towards the bus, the driver comes and's like, "Are you guys riding on that charter bus over there?" And we were like "Hah, yeah, we wish." Then he said, "Cause this one's for the football team." We thought he was joking, but when we realized he wasn't, man, now we didn't have a ride back home and it was 6:30 PM and fast getting dark. Apparently, when you order a bus, its only for a one way trip. So the bus that had brought us had left, and wasn't coming back. What a great way to end a great day, huh? Especially for Garret. He had left his entire backpack on the bus, thinking that we'd be taking the same one home, so now all school stuff was gone. Eventually, we all called up our own rides to get picked up by. I got a carpool with Garret back to school. Anton and Vasco were also in the car. We stopped by PUSD's bus place to see if we could get Garret's stuff back, but the lone mechanic there was no help. Then me, always being one step ahead of the game, suggested that Garret call the bus place tomorrow or something and ask if his stuff was found on Maggie's bus. We didn't have the number of the bus to indentify it by, but the driver had told us her name before we left. That was by bright idea of the day =P. Good luck to Garret with that. I got home at 7:30 PM because of all this delay and had dinner, a shower, and did homework. What a GREAT day. -_-

On Monday in Humanities we had people from UC Irvine come down to give us a survey about stuffs. You probably remember taking it last year. Some people who hadn't signed up to take the survey got to do crossword puzzles the whole period while some others whose parents had given the college to survey them months ago in a letter got huge like 50 page (exaggerated a little) packets worth or survey-ing. I was one of those lucky ducks. But on the very first page, they gave us the option to do it or not, and I filled in the "I choose not to participate in this survey" bubble. I felt kinda bad cause a year ago my parents had told them I would take it. That and I kinda felt like I was putting to waste a hell of a lot of paper (remember, like 50 pages). But with rumors of a pop quiz in my next period APEC class, I had to study. But even after spending the whole period studying for the pop quiz next period, I still managed to get a zero on it. lol. Then in orchestra the first violins were sucking to Mr. Torns us play a certain hard part stand by stand. After he got to mine and Vladik's, he was like, "Some of you first violins really need to practice your music."

Tuesday was a Wednesday lab day schedule since we didn't have school on Wednesday. Math was a bore. So was humanities. In orchestra we had sectionals and we got through a whopping total of like 10 measures in the 1 hour 45 minute period that we had. We are elite. Heh. After school we played some school in waterpolo and we killed them. When Scott found out that I hadn't scored a single goal throughout the whole season, he made it his goal to get me the ball to score with. The main reason why I hadn't scored to this point in the season was because I had never once even shot for the goal. I never find myself an oppertunity to get open from my defender to do so. When the game ended and I still hadn't scored, Scott was slightly pissed... in a playful kinda way? Oh well, I didn't care cause we won.

On Wednesday since there wasn't school we had morning waterpolo practice at 7 AM. It was supposed to be with JV, but the JV coach was apparently sick that morning so JV went home. That left novice in the cold morning pool for the next 2 hours all by our lonesome. I went to In N Out right after practice, but they weren't open (damn them!) so I went somewhere else in stead... yeah.

Thursday all my classes were boring except APEC. That class is never boring. After school we played Uni in waterpolo. Since they didn't have a novice team, we played their novice. We lost something like 10 - 1. But guess what? It was me that made the only goal :P. First goal of the season whoooo. At the end of the third quarter with like 2 seconds left on the clock I somehow got the ball and everyone was shouting "SHOOT IT SHOOT ITT!!!" So as I cock my arm back to throw the ball from half tank and hopefully make it into the goal, the guy defending me tries to swipe the ball out of my hand. But he misses and instead lands 3 fingers ramming into my right eye. I stayed out most of the last quarter with a swollen eye. The ball that I threw made it just in front of the goal... and stopped there -_-. But hey, I made a goal earlier in the game so I'm happy.

Friday was spenting recieving comments from people about my eye being swollen and bloodshot. I got a 100% on the APEC vocab. I didn't go to the homecoming game cause the next day I had CYO seating auditions and had to practice.

Saturday in CYO we had a guest conductor while Mr. Gilson was testing people, and she was kinda creepy. Mr. Gilson wanted to get all the violin testing done, but that took a hell of a long time. I stayed at CYO for an extra 1 and a half hours than I was supposed to cause Mr. Gilson still had not gotten to me until then. I think I did pretty good.

In Chinese school today we were argueing whether we want to watch Hero or Mulan next week.