so it’s late afternoon on a friday out here in california, and of all places, where am i? at the dupelx of woody chang, the younger brother of my wonderful friend wally. i took the BART out to Berkeley in order to get a look at the campus and the downtown area, but when i got here, i felt a bit lost, so i looked up woody in the Berkeley directory and emailed him with my cell phone number asking if he would be a guide. within the hour, he called me and offered his services.
woody, as i have written before, is the quintessential asian american nerd. although he does not wear glasses, he dresses the part, moves the part and even speaks the part to perfection. he guided me around campus and then suggested we go to the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM, just like Brooklyn Art Museum back home). we did the quickest tour ever – in probably 15 minutes tops – and skimmed through every piece of work. i noticed a bunch of abstract works and voiced my disdain for such artsy, deconstructionist pieces. woody, in his star trekky declamation, noted that these were “scrawlings of the disturbed mind.” haha. i just thought that was a funny line coming from him.
i also found it amusing right when he first took me to campus and mentioned “free dinner” as the expected fee for his tour guide. he even referenced his previous tour experiences such as “mr. yao” or “mr. chong” – all his dad’s friends – and how they bought him dinner afterwards. i was more than glad to oblige and it gave me a chuckle. i even threw in a free jamba juice cuz he didn’t cease to crack me up. good guy that woody.
woody’s duplex is a nice looking house from the outside, and inside, it’s large enough to be a small frat home, but given woody’s social standing, it is more like a PC Game Center. his room is huge – i’d say it’s about 150 sq. ft – and you see a single mattress without any bed frames in the corner, a pile of papers all over the desk with a stray, eaten day-old cup noodle container, a stack of magazines propping up his LCD monitor and a self full of sceince fiction books. it actually looks very much like his room at home, which wally and i used to frequent in high school when we needed our grunt work done such as excel spreadsheets for a science lab report or some random work for any number of our underground operations.
well, i guess i’ve spent enough time on woody’s computer. time to look at berkeley one last time before heading back to SF. i’m telling you – the weather out here is too nice to get any work done. thank goodness for the miserable, erratic weather in nyc. serves the mind right.