meet some of beno's friends!

beno's high school buddies!

from left to right: ken, beno, and nelson.

beno went to leland high school with these two handsome and intelligent gentlemen. in their senior year, 1992-93, they started a deejay group and spent many hours on the art of mixing dance music. now ken attends san jose state university, and nelson attends uc san diego.

beno's berkeley crew!

toby jaw is the smile on top. eric chang is outfitted in brown and hanging off the tractor. benjamin chang, eric's roommate in their northside pad, is camouflaged behind eric in black. ed park is leaning towards us, next to beno.

vinnie gueriguian (not pictured), ed park, and beno started the "friday nite dinner club" in their sophomore year of cal berkeley. they tried to treat each other to dinner on friday nights, as often as they could. yes, they lived beyond their means, as ed once put it, but perhaps it is sorta like the original joy luck club, in the book... a way to act happy when all sorts of stuff is just going wrong. i suppose those physics problems sets, due on friday's at 5 o'clock, warranted these dinners. but those days are long gone. as engineering majors, we do not need any more physics classes -- not that upper division physics would have the same feel as those three semesters of physics 7abc. also a prerequisite of the club was bachelorhood, and that eventually posed a problem for some.

edward park helps govern the uc berkeley student body as an asuc senator . i shall never forget the numerous 300 am chalking runs which ed, toby, and i spread all over berkeley. "ed park ain't nuthin' but a hoochie mama! ed park! ed park! hoochie mama!"

i met tobias jaw my first semester at cal in my music 27 class, a huge lecture in the music auditorium. somehow we sat next to each other one afternoon. who knows how are lives might be now if that never happened! however, we seemed to always have classes with each other until our third year. but we still had plenty to talk about. "beno, we are going to say this over and over until we fall asleep, until we get it throught our thick skulls: 'when girls are looking for boyfriends, they are not looking for girlfriends. when girls are looking for...'"

that late night conversation that took place when toby was designing a flier for his a capella group, decadence , while i slept nearby in my bed. i awoke to find toby digging through my desk drawer. in my drowsy state, toby's intrusion into my desk sorta annoyed me, but who was i to say anything intelligent?

coming home from my taekwondo promotional exam some december saturday in 1994, i met eric chang. he had followed edward park on a trip to southside andronico's to pick up bulgogi ingredients. somehow they ended up at our apartment ready for me to drive them back to foothill. eric was so quiet.... right now, both ben and eric serve as officers for the regents and chancellor's scholarship association .

irvine people minus eileen kim

heather lamb and philip huang eat beno's fire-hot chili.

i lived with phil my freshman year at the foothill residential housing facility (dorm). philip and i have shared many late night conversations, mostly about relationships: past, future, and present. phil studies history here at cal. he sure knows quite a bit of it and more. he competes for cal's quiz bowl team , a trivia / knowledge mindsport. people describe phil as phil-osophical... maybe... he does try to find meaning in most events in life and in most words, spoken or written.

heather and i have shared similar conversations. but i think all those relationship issues changed for her when she met her husband alvaro padilla while living in a co-op her junior year.

phil, heather, toby, eric, and i often wrote for an e-mail group i started called "the mourning dove people" (mdp). we often exchanged stories, both silly and emotional, stories which both served as a humour outlet and as a media to express very personal thoughts. sometimes we abandoned the prose and poetry and simply and explicitly discussed issues and basically kept in touch with one another.

fahad anwar habib

beno and fahad at fahad's sister's wedding

i met fahad and vinnie through an old leland friend, stephan garcia. we all lived at foothill the 93-94 academic year at cal. we shared many dining common (d.c.) meals. fahad and i went to many concerts together. we used to chase around juliana hatfield. somewhere i have her autograph and other concert memorabilia. fahad, vinnie, and i moved out of foothill after our freshman year into an apartment on hillegass ave., on the southside of the berkeley campus. i shall never forget vinnie's jumping out of bed with only his underwear to clobber fahad with his pillow. then fahad left for a year in england. but he came back, as he promised, and graduated with honors from the uc berkeley legal studies department.

taekwondo buddies

last, but not least...

beno with his girlfriend, vivian peng

now visit beno's photo album to see more pictures of beno's homies!