Jonathan Ong's Blog

Due to my internship at the Army, I was forced to take another semester at Berkeley. Of course I can’t do a 5 month lease on an apartment, so I’m renting a living room from some friends for that 5 months. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the furniture, but I also wanted to buy furniture that I could use in the future. The problem with things I bought in the past is that they just weren’t useful after I moved. I also didn’t want to move furniture back from home because it would cost just as much to move it as it would to buy new things. So here’s how you can furnish your living room for less than $500 and be able to use everything after you leave.

Bedding

• Ikea Sultan Florvag Mattress$99.00
• Ikea Skydda Hogt Mattress Pad $16.99

You probably don’t need the mattress pad, but I got it to keep my mattress clean regardless. What’s great about this mattress is that it’s firm enough so that when you lay on it, you don’t feel the floor. Other mattresses are too soft. If you are really cheap, you can buy only the mattress foam padding for less than $50, but expect to feel the floor when you sleep on it. If you really want, you can spend another $30 for an Ikea twin size bed frame, but what for? You won’t use it agian.

The best part about this mattress is that its light weight. It comes rapped in a cylinder from Ikea, so technically, you can store it back as a cylinder. Have friends who wants to sleep over? Someone passed out drunk on the couch you want to sit on? Pull out this Ikea mattress from your closet and make them sleep on it. Keep the mattress pad on though so they don’t drool all over it.

Clothing

• Target Garment Rack – $59.99

There are cheaper garment racks at Target, but when I was at the register, the cashier advised me that I should buy this one because the others can’t hold much clothes. Sure it costs a little more, but you’ll actually be able to use it for a long time since it’s actually made out of metal. Plus, it’s very easy to assemble.

What about your socks and boxers? Why, just use your suitcase like I did! Who needs drawers? You don’t want a suitcase sitting in the corner taking up space for nothing. And by the way, in this picture the black clothing rack isn’t mine.

Desk

• Ikea Vika Amon Table Top – $39.99
• Ikea Vika Curry Leg x 4- $3.50 ($14.00)

For me, the most important part of the room is the desk. Before I bought an expensive Galant desk from Ikea, but it was so specific to my room that I couldn’t use it afterward and it got too dirty after leaving it in my garage for a while. The best part of these Vika Amon tables is that they are straight up rectangles. I got two of them to make an L shaped desk and plan to screw them together using a wooden board so theres no leg in the middle.

Unlike other desks, you can use this for other things such as a dining table. It’s very easy to move and assemble since all you do is basically unscrew the legs. They’re modular, so you can make any design you want. It’s much better than the other desks Ikea offer. I bought a $10 Lack coffee table to put underneath my desk to put more things since I hate drawers.

Furnishings

• Ikea Dokument Waste Basket – $5.99
• Ikea Bumerang Curved Clothes Hangers – $3.99/8 Pack
• Ikea Bumerang Pants Hanger – $.99

Most of my things such as my laundry basket, blankets, bed and pillow sheets, and pillow were from home, so these aren’t included in the price, but these are my favorite items from Ikea that are actually useful. The pant hangers are much better than usual skirt hangers. At first I wanted black hangers but then I decided on saving money since they’re a little more expensive.

Total cost not including the items I already had and only one of my desks? Less than $300, so that’s about $300 to furnish the whole room. Granted, your room is kind of bare, but that’s all you need.

My declining interest in photography is primarily due to the large number of casual photographers. It was nice having an SLR when not many people were interested in photography, but as prices on electronics decreased, so did DSLR’s popularity. My sense of uniqueness and nonconformity diminished and I no longer felt special, much like my interest in Apple products.

However, the loss of my sense of uniqueness was not the most significant reason of my declining interest, it was the loss of passion in everyone’s photography. Back in the film days, photography shares something significant about you to the world as a means of expression. Taking pictures with a film camera is difficult, making photography an art form. Now that everyone has access to an SLR, everyone can take a beautiful photo. The beauty is no longer derived from the photographers’ ability, but in the camera’s ability to take the photo.

I used to take a lot of photos, but as I criticized my own art work; I realized this was art work that anyone can do. Why try to exceed in an art form which requires me to compete with a large proportion of the population? Most of the photos I take can be easily duplicated by another person with a similar camera. As I looked at other people’s photographs, I noticed that many of them are also photos that I could easily duplicate, especially scenic photography which is by no means an artistic expression of the photographer. Essentially, the realm of photography has been spammed by mediocrity, a level previously rarely attainable. I don’t understand people whose main goals are to be a great photographers because most of the time I’m pretty sure there are thousands of people better than them.

Great photography has become more difficult. To create any great art work, you need expensive accessories such as backdrops and lights, you need beautiful models, you need awesome locations, and foremost, you need dedication. Great photography requires lifelong dedication to the arts. It is very rare that I see a photograph taken by someone not dedicated to the arts that emotionally moves me unless the photo was simply clever. I have not dedicated my life to the arts and thus choose not to buy expensive accessories in a hobby that serves almost no purpose in my career.

Thus, my use of photography has slowly changed from an art form to a tool. I don’t try to create artistic photos, I only use it as a means to fulfill other goals or other means of expression. Art isn’t a field in which I excel so I’m not going to waste energy on it.

But art isn’t the only purpose of cameras. Most people use cameras to remember events, but that requires no skill in photography. I don’t understand why people take scenic photos of where they’ve been because you can find much better photos of the same place for free online. My personal opinion is that events themselves do not matter, its the lessons and bonds that we experience and share that matter and a photograph contributes very little these aspects. I don’t need a photograph to remember that you hold a special place in my heart.

“Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” – Isaiah 1:14 (New International Version)

New Moon was probably both the best and worst movie this year. The acting was horrible, the storyline was unimpressive, and the characters were deeply undeveloped and flawed. My main reason in watching both Twilight and New Moon were to understand why American girls loved them so much, and my appreciation for the series stems only from its representation of today’s women. 30 years from now when my son asks me, “How were women back when you were young?” I can simply make him watch the Twilight series and he will engage in a moment of utter disbelief. After being first inspired from this Bible passage which demonstrates that God clearly hates Twilight and The Oatmeal’s How Twilight Works, I decided to write about how Bella is America’s stereotypical girl. Of course, I didn’t actually read the article knowing I was going to write this one, so please read The Oatmeal’s article too. It has funny pictures!

For those of you who don’t know about the series, Twilight is about a girl, Bella, stuck in a rainy town in Washington who falls in love with a vampire, Edward, while a werewolf, Jacob, also falls in love with her. It is purposely written with limit character development so that the audience can place themselves in the movie – a blank slate if you will. Bella is stuck in a small city and longs for a fantastical escape and the audience gets theirs vicariously.

Bella’s pre-Edward environment is stereotypical of a discontent American girl’s. She comes from a broken home and divorced parents. She lives in a small town that offers her no excitement or adventure. She feels alone and longs for a sense of belonging.  She is uninspired, uninteresting, and unambitious. She has no talents and no hobbies other than crying and complaining. She lacks an interesting personality. In the words of Rise Against, she “doesn’t live, she just survives”, and, in a sense, is already dead. The typical woman in American media is discontent mainly because you need conflict to drive a story. However, I’m sure that a majority of women and people in America are discontent and seek an escape from reality.

Edward is the stereotypical American girl’s dream guy. All girls love bad boys, but especially bad boys that are actually good at heart. What better guy than a vampire who refuses to kill humans? He walks like a badass, talks like a badass, looks like a badass (arguable), and, if he wants, kills like a badass. Again, Edward has no ambition. If I were immortal, I’d do something other than repeating high school for the rest of my life. How many times do you want to read Romeo and Juliet? Perhaps he should be like his adopted dad and become a doctor and actually help people. He has no talents or hobbies and no real contribution to society. I’m just surprised he doesn’t smoke pot or explicitly ask Bella for sex.

Girls want someone to love them, and sometimes, love him back. Perhaps the greatest love story is the story of Romeo and Juliet. New Moon is basically this story placed in a setting of these mythical creatures. Bella and Edward have nothing to look forward in life except each other and would do anything to be together forever. The two men who love her are enemies: werewolves and vampires. Before Edward came, Bella’s life was basically dead and becoming a vampire, an undead, makes no difference except the possibility of being with Edward forever. In media, American girls tend to have no focus early in life and simply seek mates.

Jacob is the epitome of the term “intellectual whore^2”. He is someone you can rely on, talk to, and trust. He’s sweet, caring, and always there when you need him… well, at least when he’s not in rage mode. However, the girl never sees him as more than a friend while being more than a friend was his only intention. In media, American girls typically have a best guy friend who loves and genuinely cares for her but she sleeps with everyone except him. He’s the nice guy that the protagonist takes advantage of. It’s interesting to see how most girls who watch New Moon are “Team Jacob” (on Jacob’s side, not Edward’s) when they don’t realize that there are real-life Jacobs they abandon every day.

Remember that Bella is not special other than the fact that vampires’ powers don’t work on her, which the author has yet to define (Up to New Moon. I haven’t watched). She longs to be special, to have a purpose, to be different than the norm, and the only way she knows how is by becoming a vampire. Being a vampire would make her part of a very small and special group of people on Earth in contrast to the insignificant person she is right now.

Special is what every girl longs to be. Almost every girl I know wants to be famous or at least gain recognition for something. They look up towards “stars”, their Jonas Brothers and Zac Efrons, and yearn to become like them and consequently turn to drastic measures to attempt to gain attention through extreme means such as plastic surgery, excessive amounts of make-up, flirtatious gestures, obnoxious noises… the list goes on. These measures don’t even directly lead to success, fame, or recognition as real success requires dedication, hard work, and sometimes talent and skill. They lose track of who they are and instead long to become a fictitious persona, and as they lose track of who they are, the gap between who they are who they’ve become crushes their souls. And what do they do? Sit at home and cry. Bella feels as though Edward is superhuman and needs to rise to his level, and the only way to do so is to become a fellow vampire, a metaphor for what fame has meant to girls these days.

Bella teaches girls that it is okay to do a lot of things that demonstrate weak character. It is not okay to sit at home and cry for half a year. It is not okay to be risky and jump on a random person’s motorcycle or cliff dive by yourself. She teaches girls that it is okay to do whatever they feel like doing, which is obviously not true and instead causes minor disasters. American women in the media tend to act upon their emotions and not consider the consequences it has on others and especially themselves. And what do they do after they’ve figured out the mistake they’ve made? Sit at home and cry. And what do they do while they sit at home and cry? They day dream and think about what happened, what went wrong, whose fault it was, how it could’ve been, and how it should’ve been, and in all their masturbatory glory fantasize a world that went “according to plan”: Twilight.

Though Bella doesn’t represent all of America’s girls, most American girls share some similarities with her. Most girls somehow relate to Bella and feel they understand her and thus feel as though Twilight is the greatest love story ever told. But let me tell you, Bella’s traits are not particularly favorable traits. Women who like Twilight generally do because they live through Bella vicariously, which can only be true if they share some traits with her or are discontent with the environment they are in or put themselves in. Personally, I would not date a girl with any of her personality or character traits since she would be considered dull to me. In fact, I consider girls who hate Twilight rather amazing.

Since I’m currently taking two graduate courses, I’ve grown tired of school. I never knew that 4-unit courses could take so much of my time. Thus, instead of going directly to graduate school, I am considering taking a year or two off to work, though heavily depending on where I work. Obviously to find a good job, I have spent some of my free time trying to design a nice, beautiful resume.

One thing I love about writing resumes is that it allows me to design. As a math major, the only documents I write are usually written in LaTeX which lacks any sort of design due to its audience. Resumes are the only area I can design something that is actually productive. Looking at math equations all day isn’t fun.

Right now, I have two resumes. The first, older one is the following which I’ve submitted to Callisto (Berkeley Career Center). Notice that I hid my public information. In this older version written in Microsoft Word, I tried to detail my tasks for my past jobs. However, I personally feel as though I accomplished nothing with these past research positions and found the extra text unnecessary and cluttering. I also noticed that with my interview with JPL, the interviewer just asked me to explain what I did at all these positions. I decided to remove the explanations of these positions. 

Thus, I set upon a journey to create a new resume. This time, I used Adobe InDesign instead of Microsoft Word because I found Word very frustrating to use; it just doesn’t give you enough power over your document. Apple Pages was pretty good, but I’m no longer a Mac user (instead I’m a happy Windows 7 user, for the most part). I also wanted this resume to exemplify who I am. Thus, here are the philosophies and concepts I wanted to portray:

1. Impact: I wanted them to remember who I am: I have to make this resume beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. My name is going to be displayed large at the top so that it will be ingrained in their mind, even if only with a glance. I also want them to know that I’m from UC Berkeley, the top public university in the nation, and an applied mathematics major. However, in contrast to other math majors, I want to show them that I’m creative.
2. Minimal: I want the least amount of text on the resume as possible. I want a sufficient amount of white-space, but not too much so that they think my resume is empty. I purposely don’t want to put everything on one page to give them the impression that I can not fit all my accomplishments on one page. In fact, I would be quite sad if I felt as though I could fit all myself on a single page. I want to look only sufficiently interesting so that they will either contact me or go to my website to learn more about me. The more responses to my resume I get, the better, even if you’re not interested in working for the company because then you know your resume is working. The removal of the details of my past positions and their eccentric titles only makes people curious.
3. Visual: There are many details I want to put on my resume, but I want to use as little text as possible and allow the employers to understand me as fast as possible. I thus decided to use a graph to demonstrate my skills. Everyone loves graphs. I also decided to use color as a use of emphasis: light blue to emphasize certain aspects of my resume such as my name, major, e-mail address, and positions, dark blue to emphasize my text, and bold with a different font to separate my categories.
4. Experience: I have two types of experiences: on-campus research and internship. I decided to separate these two since, to me, they are very different; my internship was in the field of defense and my on-campus research is basically statistics and data analysis. I want to emphasize my internship since many of the jobs I’m looking at are either defense related or at least government related.
5. Education: I succeeded in college, which most people don’t, so I should emphasize this accomplishment. I want to tell them my GPA, but only up to 2 significant digits since it is less text and it looks better. I also want to tell them all the graduate courses and interesting electives I’ve taken since for the jobs I’m interested in, these graduate courses would be very useful and sometimes necessary.
6. Interactive: Although I purposely did not include the summary of my past experiences on my resume, I want them to easily be able to find out what I did. Thus, I want to provide links to where they can find out more about me. The first is my main website that has a full, unabridged resume. However I want to include links to the actual company websites and its relevant pages.

I’m very happy with my design. There’s very little text, yet I feel as though this gives resume gives employers a very good idea of who I am. Of course, there is a detailed version of my resume at http://jonon.gs/resume/, which I want the employers to know and click.

Not sure how to make a beautiful resume? Here’s some tips:

• Don’t use Times New Roman and DON’T USE COMIC SANS. Everyone uses Times New Roman, which is the best reason not to. Times New Roman is overused, the default Word font, and boring. Use something beautiful! You can even use multiple fonts for creative effect. For my resume, I used Helvetica Neue Thin for my main text, Helvetica for my categories, and Helvetica-Light for my header. Helvetica is the default design font; anything beautiful on the web has a very good chance of using Helvetica. Steve Jobs actually studied typography in college which explained the success of Apple due to its emphasis on design: Apple’s default font is Helvetica.
• Be wary of the size of your text. You don’t want to make your text small because it will make your resume look cluttered. Many employers are old and will have trouble reading your small text. If you have to use small text to fit everything on one page, then reconsider what you put on your resume because you are putting too much.
• Only put important information. No one cares about your life experiences or your potential abilities. In other words, don’t put an essay on your resume. If you google some variation of “beautiful resume”, you’ll find resumes which people talk. No, that’s what a cover letter is for. Not all your skills are going to be necessary for the jobs you want. I didn’t include Microsoft Word skills or Mac OS X skills to my resume because it’s pointless; if someone knows how to write in C then I’m pretty sure that person knows how to operate a UNIX computer. You don’t need to list all your past experiences or all the tasks for your positions. Only list the relevant ones and the tasks that are actually meaningful. If you can, list awards and accomplishments instead of tasks. I wish I could, but I have never been formally acknowledged for any of my work.
• Keep your sentences succinct. You don’t want your employer to struggle to read your resume because you put too much useless information. You want to get your point across as fast as possible.
• Don’t abbreviate. Don’t use contractions. You don’t want your employer asking what something means when they don’t have to. I didn’t want to use numbers to date my positions, but I had to or else the dates would not fit in the column. If I could, I would write the dates out. Soon, hopefully the length of my positions will be in years instead of months. Contractions are only used in informal writing so don’t use them in a resume.
• Use color. Color is always beautiful, but either know how to use color or don’t use too much. I kept the use of color on my resume low since I’m not a skilled designer.
• Don’t include your high school. No one cares what accomplishments  you made during high school.
• White-space is important. You don’t want your resume to look cluttered and want it easy to read.
• Use resume paper. The difference between resume paper and normal paper is that resume paper is made out of 100% cotton, weighs more, and feels stiffer and less smooth. You don’t want your resume to slip out of your employer’s hands.
• PDF. PDF. PDF. Never submit a resume as a Word document or an image. PDFs are just easier to read. To Macs, it’s almost just another type of image format. Not everyone uses Word, and if you use Microsoft Office 2007, .docx files are not backwards compatible with older versions of Word. Images lose a lot of quality, even without compression, since your document has to be rasterized. Save your resume as a PDF to retain its full quality. If you continuously zoom in a well made PDF documents, your text will never be pixelated. This will make your resume more aesthetic to employers who have to zoom in your resume to read it or have small screens and have to view portions of it at a time. And don’t work for a company that only accepts resumes in Word because that just shows how out of date they are with technology and the conservative mindset the company probably has.

My experience with this resume has been very good. When I went to a career fair in Berkeley and talked to various companies such as Lockheed Martin, the representatives were able to quickly see that I was interested in a position in a quantitative, research oriented field and was a US citizen, which is necessary to obtain a security clearance. I’m glad that employers didn’t have to struggle to find the information they were interested in.