2010 in pictures

Last year I did this pictures post. Thought I'd do it again this year, since I haven't been posting that much. It's been a good year... this marks the tenth year I've been living in the United States. Finally got citizenship too, woo!

It's hard to believe that ten years ago, I wrote this three-page list of reason why California sucks. That was when I was 12 and thought snow was the best thing ever. Now, I'm glad it never gets below like 40 degrees here. Fahrenheit. Oh how things have changed.

1. January

I turned 21! Here is dinner at Zabu Zabu, where Jeremy attempted a 3-layer cube cake :)
I had a few firsts this month. Not all of which I will detail here. But I got my first guitar, I got my ears pierced, etc. Pretty good month.

2. February

I went to the pillow fight in SF for Valentine's Day! Although the fight was fun, walking around outside on V-Day really isn't. Would not do again.
Other highlights include a trip to Reno at the end of the month, where I gambled for the first time.
(Sorry for terrible pic quality. They'll get better...)

3. March

Trip to the Berkeley Botanical Gardens! On assignment for Berkeley's Caliber magazine.
In 2009 my March was pretty good. It was pretty good this year too. Hopefully 2011's will be even better!

4. April

Second time to the Cherry Blossom Festival!

5. May

Here's a pic I couldn't leave out. End of May we had a massive sewing party in which we made Pokemon trainer costumes for Fanime. See Facebook for said embarrassing pictures of me dressed as a 10-year-old. I also saw Wicked for the second time! Got better seats. Felt it was better the first time, but still worth.

6. June

This was a pretty cool day we had. First we were at Theta Chi for The Pack's filming of Wolfpack Party. See me in the music video here (grey striped shirt on right). Then we went swimming at Strawberry Canyon. Then to Trader Joe's for sandwich supplies --> Berkeley Rose Garden --> secret waterfall for picnic! This was also after a night of epic.... fun.

7. July

Impressionist exhibit at the De Young museum!! Monet!! Degas!! Renoir!! This month I also saw Idina Menzel perform with SF Symphony!! I also became an American citizen.

8. August

Cubers on a subway in New York. In August we had our Boston/New York trip. Cubers at Nationals. Cubers everywhere in Boston. Cubing all the time.

9. September

Beginning of my senior year at Cal. Was in denial and ran off to San Francisco food festival. Where there were many noms.

10. October

2nd Cal football game ever! We beat UCLA, I went with lovely roommates, pretty good day in general.

11. November

I saw Robyn live! Free tickets! Plus we had really good tri-tip salad for dinner. Also she signed my CD. Maybe I should've taken a pic of it and posted that instead.

12. December

I went snowboarding in Tahoe and went on a scarier green hill, on which I actually turned and carved a few times without falling on my face.

Happy 2011! This is going to be a scary year for me. Whee.

*some pics are credited to Justin and Esther.

Pet Peeves: Cropping out other people for your profile picture

As an amateur photographer, I totally understand retouching photos or enhancing them or manipulating them to make them better. What I don't understand however, are people who upload pictures on facebook with their friends cropped out.

What does this say about them? Here are some of my hypotheses.
-My friends are too ugly and I don't want them ruining the picture.
-My friends are really good-looking and I don't want them to look better than me.
-I think this facial expression of mine is really cool and I think I look great.
-I have no sense of what constitutes the right size for a photograph and I must butcher it.
-I don't want people to know I have friends.

Here are some examples. To avoid hurting peoples' feelings I am only using pictures of myself or random strangers.


here is a perfectly nice (albeit a little blurry) picture of some nice happy girls. I decide - this is a good picture of me, let me use it for facebook!

But instead of using that version on my facebook...

I will instead use a 10x10000 version of the picture, complete with some random hand sticking out of nowhere. Nothing is centered right, but at least I get to be the main focus point.

The best ones are when it's a picture of you and one other person at a special event.

You are my special friend because I came to your graduation and we have a special picture together.

But then when this goes on facebook -

Random hand? - check
Weird picture size? - check
Deciding your friend is not good enough for your profile picture even though you went to their graduation? - check

So yea. Every time I see one of these I just chuckle silently to myself because it's so obvious. Actually I admit, I am also guilty of this. But only once! A cookie if you can figure out which one.

How to Model

Part 1:


How to not model:


How to model, part 2:

Learn from the hair.

2009 in pictures

Last year I recall attempting to write up some summarizing thing for my livejournal, going through important things that happened in each month. I think I was at maybe July before I got too lazy and stopped. This year, I will instead use pictures, and show one cool thing I did each month, proving that my life is interesting and fun and full of intrigue. Enjoy.

1. January

My first ever Exploratorium Rubik's Cube competition. Had been wanting to go to one for years, and finally got to! No world records were set, but I did "win" the Life Award with a result of awesome.

2. February

I went to see Wicked. I got to wear cool shoes. I knew all the songs. It was amazing.

3. March

This was a happy month although I don't quite remember what I was doing. Here is a green flower I got for free on St. Patrick's Day.

4. April

I had a McGangBang. lulz. It was quite good.

5. May

Not something cool I did per se, but they were putting in new windows, resulting in a hole in our wall for a day! All while I was studying for finals, great timing.

6. June

I met Sarah Dessen! She was one of my favorite authors in middle school/high school. Also bought my first book by her, which is also my favorite - This Lullaby.

7. July

Death Cab for Cutie at the Greek Theatre. Along with Ra Ra Riot and Andrew Bird. Got my tickets the day of, so cheap!

8. August

US Nationals at Stanford. In which I got two 17s solves! Fun weekend too :)

9. September

This was a busy month so I don't have anything specifically taken during it, but I was working on a production team for BARE magazine, culminating in this super fun photoshoot in October.

10. October

Dressed up as Elphaba (minus the green) for Halloween! Then did some negative cube solving. (Check out Bugs Bunny's whiskers teehee)

11. November

Went to two back-to-back Rubik's Cube competitions, in which I started competing in one hand. After the 2nd competition Berkeley also killed Stanford in football.

12. December

Received my amazing gorgeous Nikon D90 body and started learning to take pictures. Expect better pictures next year!! Also, I think my hair length has come around full circle.

A Weekend in Pictures Part 1

Part 1 because more may be coming soon.


The venue. Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University.


Darren doing a mystery puzzle - solving emo cube with 3D glasses!


Me and Macky judging. I swear I just looked away on accident. lol.


Another mystery puzzle - team blindfold with TouchCube! DNF.


More team blindfold fun.


"yesyesyesyes nooooo no yes! yesssss" team bld using only yes/no


Day 2 - skirt/dress day


Berkeley kids warming up


BBQ at Lars Petrus' house


Day 3 mystery puzzle - crazy cube sudoku! Another DNF.


Awards! I got one too :)


We're all winnars!!

Photo credits: Lucas Garron, Stanley Wong, Lars Vandenbergh

pics or it didn't happen!

I recently got an anonymous tip from my brother's friend (who I know too, supposedly), regarding my photography skillz.

??: and tell her to get a external flash and not use the ghetto one that came with the camera lawl
??: but she has a good eye for aperture setting
??: just underexposed
??: a lot of her pics are like that
??: thats one of my underexposed shots
??: theres shadows overcasting the subject, making the color washed out
??: getting a polarizer helps ..
r: it's underexposed bc i dont have flash, genius
r: and i dont need a polarizer, i have photoshop

It was amusing until I still couldn't figure out who it was. I'm usually pretty good at these things :D Anyway, before a cute Nikon D40 or D60 magically drops in my lap, I have to stick to my huge fat D1H. To show him who's boss, I considered putting together an album of some of my better shots, but alas, all of the good shots have me in them (obviously).

But here are some of them anyway. Enjoy :]













Off-topic, but:
n: did baba and mama let you pierce your ears by any chance
n: did they say when you can?
r: no
r: like never
r: why?
n: oh
n: i kinda want one
kekekekkekekekeee

I Google myself regularly

I should really clean up after myself on the WWW. I've been using this "spiritgreen" thing for years, and when I search it on google odd things come up:


1. Legit, my livejournal <3
2. My attempt in middle school to create a forum for artists/writers everywhere. We reached 300 members and slowly died... should get rid of that
3. Last.fm! Hopefully I'm not listening to a lot of angry music
4. Icon Journal

After the first page it gets a bit weirder:

1. Some weird asian girl took my name!
2. Deviantart! (mental note to delete some really crappy art)

And then there are bunch of posts from... slickdeals. But after that there are lovely people crediting me for use of my icons.

And I really don't know what I'm doing with this blog. I've been stalking around Blogger for a while now, and maybe this time I'm just going to quietly start posting and see if anyone notices. I need a better name.