Glycine is the only achiral amino acid!

So it's Monday night, 10:51pm to be specific, and I'm at the library where I should be studying for my chemistry midterm that is to take place on Wednesday.  In the time between now and Wednesday I have to memorize the names, 1-letter abbreviations, 3-letter abbreviations, functional groups, uses, and characteristics of all the amino acids.  And that is probably going to be only about 20% of the midterm, at most.  Needless to say, I'm not excited.  So when I say, "I should be studying."  I really should be studying.  But Derek just had to publish his record long post, thanks buddy. So I thought that while I was in the blogging mood I might as well start on what will not be as long as Derek's post but will attempt to give the same entertainment value.
Although I have already conceded that this post will lack the length of the one prior, I still have much to talk about so I'm just going to get right into it and I will be doing so in no particular order.  I do appreciate the change to the front page which has made it more navigable and it got me thinking whether or not I should begin to tag my posts or not.  The first thought to come to mind is, "No, that's too much effort."  Similar to Derek's TV remote dilemma, it produces a scenario that requires minimal effort yet feels like a monumental challenge requiring outrageous feats of strength.  My April 2nd resolution was going to be that I should stop complaining (which I do quite a bit) about stuff that requires minimal effort and just force myself to do these things because they really aren't that bad.  Reevaluating this resolution, I find absolutely no pleasure in tagging this post and thus I will not exert the minimal effort that is required to tag it and will not commit to this resolution.

As you know, or don't know I'm not really sure, I have finished my history of the elements book and have moved on to The Fountainhead.  To give a better book review than Derek could ever, don't read the history of the elements book (I'm not even going to look up the exact title because you'll never read it so it's not important) because it's awfully boring.  That is all.  Better book review? I think so.  The Fountainhead on the other hand I have taken a liking to. I'm making progress in my opinion and  I have already grown fond of one particular quote which I will now relate to you along with my train of thoughts that followed.

"But I realize - and in that spirit I accept it - that this tribute was paid not to my person, but to a principle which chance has granted me to represent in all humility tonight."

This was one of the first statements issued by a speaker after he received the thunderous applause of an audience; an audience who had come solely for this man's speech.  I like this quote so much because it instantly eliminates any arrogance that is inevitably portrayed by being selected to give a speech. Having thought about this a lot while considering possible valedictorian speeches, the challenge when appealing to an audience so diverse is that it's almost impossible to praise one thing without alienating another.  Someone chosen to give a speech because of their success immediately alienates a portion of their audience because they are chosen on a defining characteristic that separates them from their colleagues.  I'm not quite describing how awesome I think this quote is as well as I would like and I think I've spent nearly thirty minutes on this last paragraph rewriting it over and over again so I'm going to just leave it as is and you can evaluate the quote for yourself.

Now it's time to flashback to weeks ago, specifically to 3/14, otherwise known as pi day.  Yes, it's been that long since I've blogged.  My last post was on 3/13 and the following week I was sick and the following week was Spring Break, and now we are here.  So back to pi day.  (My computer ran out of power here, so now we are on Tuesday night, 10 hours before my chem midterm,woo!) Before pi day 2012, pi day had zero importance whatsoever to me.  Now, pi day is when my friend Tabitha (referenced in previous posts, lab partner, friends with Delara's suite-mate) pulls out all the stops and gets her... pi on?  Yes, gets her pi on.  She has a pi shirt, pi earrings, pi necklace, pi pin, basically everything pi.  And she has memorized more than one hundred digits of this amazing number.  So pi day was fun for her, but more importantly fun for me (that sounded selfish, and if you know me well then you're probably not surprised by that) because she gave me PI FUDGE.  Yes, pi fucking fudge.  See Figure A.

Figure A

Thursday (3/15, this isn't an insult at your intelligence hinting that you can't tell what date it is, I just feel obligated to put dates because this is quite a bit ago and it helps me organize my thoughts; again, a selfish act), I was doing homework all night because I left it all till that night.  Not a good idea, and something that I will try to not let happen again but will inevitably probably happen again.  I did go to challah (the abbreviated phrase implying you went to Challah for Hunger) that night though so my feeling of self-worth went up which was a plus.  That's always a plus.  I like feeling worthy of thy self.

Friday was the day in which I turned in all of my homework because as it so happens all of my classes choose that day for me to turn in things.  This is quite lame, and I hope future semester classes will choose different days so my workload is spread more evenly throughout the week.  I also went to John Muir elementary school to do that teaching thing that I do.  It was pretty fun, but kind of stressful because this class is extremely rowdy and surprisingly capable of extreme disrespect towards their elders.  For example, when the dance teacher (side note on this later, remind me) came in to see what experiment we were doing she attempted to help us take control of the class when all of a sudden one of the students shouted out, "Go back to Zimbabwe, where you belong!"

I was quite shocked to hear a fifth grader say this. There really wasn't a "race card" being pulled here (the student was African American and I believe the dance teacher was some type of Middle-Eastern) but it was nonetheless extremely condescending and gave evidence that the student had an inherent belief that people "belonged" in certain places.  When stuff like this happens or I hear about scenarios on the news like the George Zimmerman incident I get sad that this sort of intolerance still exists in the US, a relatively accepting nation when compared with the world.  The experiment (on non-newtonian fluids) was unsuccessful because results varied widely, and so overall the trip was kind of a bust, but as I said above, still fun.  I like working with kids and I hope I can get a job doing it over summer.  I'm looking at two places at the moment, really hoping on one.  We'll see if I get the job.

So, now is the time when you should remind me of what I was going to talk about.  So if you didn't already think, "Wait, Jason hasn't covered his little 'side note' he mentioned before; I should remind him!"  Then it's time to start thinking that.  This elementary school is different than our elementary schools (well at least Newport Coast, I'm only guessing as to the others) because it has a wide variety of classes, such as dance class and cooking class.  Also, the teaching approach used by the teachers is different than what I am used to.  Upon relating this to my mom, she said that it might be *insert term that I forget here* style of teaching as opposed to the traditional style I grew up with.  My mom said she wasn't a fan of the other style and I would have to agree except I might be biased because of my experience.  I guess the argument is that the non-traditional style is more engaging, however I felt that the way the teachers talked to the students was more condescending than engaging.  Just an observation.

So I don't really remember what happened that weekend, and no Rachael I would not appreciate a certain joke being made here if you thought of making a B.H. joke, but I assume it was a relatively calm weekend.  This next week's summary will be much shorter than the previous week because I was basically sick all week.  I woke up Tuesday and I felt like shit so I didn't go to class, and that ended up being a good decision because I definitely needed the rest.  I just got progressively worse throughout the week (not getting better until that Saturday) and didn't attend any of my classes, nor finishing any of my homework (with the exception of my chem lab in both attendance and work to be turned in because that would have been hard to recover from).  My entire week was spent in bed.  Sleeping.

While I was sleeping I had some really strange thoughts.  The following paragraph (maybe 2 paragraphs, I don't know how long this attempt at conveying my thoughts to you will go) are just my thoughts so if you are concerned by them than, well I actually have no advice for that because I myself was concerned with the thoughts I was having.  My crazed thoughts began happening Tuesday night.  I was resting all day, and when I went to bed that night it was quite hard for me to sleep.  I think everyone has experienced "the chills" one gets when they have a fever and then the dilemma that when they try to blanket up their temperature feels like it keeps on shifting drastically from cold and back to hot and back to cold and then the decision as to whether or not remove or keep the blankets becomes one of intense frustration.  Hopefully you know what I'm talking about, because if you don't then you probably are extremely confused.  Oh well.

So I was experiencing this drastic change (perception change to be accurate, I was probably a stable temperature) and all the while slipping from dreaming to reality in sort of an (what I believe to be) in between state.  My first dream/thought (it really was like I was dreaming yet I was thinking these things at the same time because the dream/thought process progressed in a logical flow that I was in control of) was that my body was acting like a mothership.  And that this mothership was in turn responsible for the health of all its inhabitants that were individual living components inside me.  Something like feeling my cells.  And when I would heat up I would think about how each of these individuals housed within the mothership that was my body was using my resources and that this intense heat I was feeling was a price that needed to be payed to sustain these individuals.

Yes, you guessed it! This picture is only here to
make the last couple of paragraphs seem less serious!

Okay, after typing all that out I am definitely sure that at least half, probably more think I'm crazy now.  I actually had many many many (many) more strange, crazed thoughts that I wanted to share with you but I think if I go any further you might think I was clinically insane.  Thoughts included me putting myself into the place of Will Smith in I Am Legend.  Me believing that my sickness was a curse put on me by the Devil for not believing in God.  And when I say believing I actually mean believing believing.  Like, it was scary.  I was honestly reconsidering my entire religious philosophy.  And the fact that I think having an experience where I could actually believe in God scary in retrospect makes me laugh.  Normal (and I use this word loosely) religious zealots would be excited for me to be communicating with God, however I was just scared as to even possibly believing in something so fanciful.  Yeah, so basically besides this sickness hurting me academically and putting me in bed for a week, a (plus? minus?  neutral?  not really sure how to arbitrarily judge this) side of the sickness was that I was really able to get in touch with my inner philosophy.  So if anyone wants to have long deep philosophical conversations over summer please call me up.  And that was mainly an invitation to Derek and Rich to come kill China with me.  Only two of you will get this, but the joke was so good that it was indeed worth it.

So, out of scary philosophical land where you all think I've "changed" and you're a little bit scared, we can continue with the following week and all its glory. The next week as it turned out was my Spring Break.  Surprise!  Except not really, I expect all of you to already know that.  Well, my Spring break was kind of uneventful, but nonetheless a much needed break.  I definitely slept more than I was awake.  And that is not an exaggeration for pleasurable reading.  I literally slept more than 12 hours a day.  It was glorious.  I wrote down on my "list of things to talk about" that I have been slowly checking off as I write this blog that I want to start a schedule where I go to bed by 1am and wake up  at 7am every day.  As much as I admire the thought when I wrote this, being back at school I already acknowledge the fact that this strict of a schedule was foolish of me to ever conceive.

Staring lovingly at the 17
chickens he murdered.

On Tuesday of spring break I got unlimited buffalo wings with Kevin (have you seen his new haircut? I was surprised) and Matt and yeah there really isn't much else to say about this except MATT ATE SO MANY WINGS OH MY GOD.  I'll include a picture.  I put all my pictures in after I finish all of the writing.  Is this how you guys do your blogs?  Lemme know?  Leave a comment down below.  And click the like and subscribe button.  Okay, that didn't have any relevance accept give me the pleasure of pretending I was a popular youtuber.  Some of you may have seen the connection.  Others may have not.  There really isn't a gold star given to either party so don't go all uppity on me.

On Friday the Johl household held a party of sorts with some recognizable Newport Beach families.  The Satterfields, Dales, and Fadavis were all in attendance and might I say it was a grand time indeed.  While the parents split into their mom and dad cliques, the kiddies monopolized (the word used at the time) the free market that we live in.  Yep, we played monopoly folks.  It was a five person game and sadly the game took too long to determine a decisive winner, but it was between me and Darya (Delara's sister in case you don't know).  And Kevin, I'm sorry you got shafted so hard, that really was ridiculous.

So, that was pretty much the highlights of Spring Break.  I'm back at Berkeley right now and there's just a couple things that I need to address before ending this blog.  First, Phi Psi is hosting its largest party of the year on Saturday and I'm quite excited.  It's Old School themed (if you haven't seen the movie, I highly suggest it) and, well, I'm excited.  Also, I want to get into better shape (what's new?) so I've decided that something easier than getting into "good-looking shape" will be getting into "healthy-running shape" so I'm going to do that because I'm more used to that sort of "shape."  Rachael understood what these terms implied when I mentioned them to her, so I'm just going to assume you will understand their implications as well.

Lastly, before I close this post, I would like to say that my new hobby when I'm not doing homework has turned from watching video game streams to watching old videos from the Vlogbrothers that I have not seen.  I know Nicole watches both Hank (William? (only Nicole might get this)) and John, but I cannot stress how much I love these guys.  That sentence was a compilation of two thoughts that had nothing to do with one another, yet both are true.  Watching them just puts a smile on my face.  So, to address what I commented on in Rachael's post, I will soon be purchasing one of John Green's books (don't know which one yet) to enjoy during our reading orgy parties.  To Nicole only, have you read any of his books?  But yeah, you should go check them out.  You might have the firsts experience of watching a meh video and not get addicted, but I can assure you they are amazing.  You're just going to have to trust me on that.

I'll see you Tuesday bloggers.

Jason

P.S. This is for the comment directed at Ms. T.

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