lingding

First things first. I had the saddest dream last night that like broke my heart. So like a week ago I discovered that Ty Clive was actually on facebook. I friended him, but he hasn't responded yet. So in my dream, I saw him in like a cafeteria, and I went up and was like, "Ty! I friended you on facebook!" and I was all excited and going to give him a hug and stuff. He was like purposely ignoring me, and then his little brother - I think it was Jordan - told me we couldn't be friends anymore. I don't know, but for some reason it was very obvious that it was because I wasn't Mormon? And I was just there pleading and pleading, and then Jordan decided to let me record and audio tape of my last goodbye, and I started just rambling and pouring my heart out... It was really very sad, as the person dreaming and listening to myself, even I was moved by it. Right when my voice was trembling to hold back tears and I said, "And I always wanted to say..." Jordan shut off the recorder and said, "Time's up." For some reason Mike Daugherty was there, and he said something like, "Can't you see her heart is breaking?" or something. Man, that was like such a sad dream. I was glad to find out it was just a dream, because even though I haven't seen Ty in like six years, it would be sad to think that would happen.

About Russell

Anyway, so since Thursday there's been a lot of dance-related news. Thursday we had a lesson with Christine, Saturday standard and smooth classes, and then the social on Saturday evening. Classes were fine, but we got the most devastating news after class on Saturday: the MIT ballroom team decided to drop Russell in favor of Christine. So Fil came up to us individually (called some people like Andriy) to tell us this, which was extremely strange because it felt very underhanded, like some gossip or something, because why not just announce it? I'm leaving, so I'm not directly affected by it, but I still felt somewhat affected, and also sad for Russell, whom I really like and who I feel is misunderstood.

They didn't give us any solid reasons other than he wasn't supportive of the team and they don't want to discuss the details and they went to the dean and presented the case "objectively" to ask for advice. I still feel the right thing to do is to come up with a list of complaints and present them to Russell to see if he will change them first, because I think he was rather shocked as well. I also think they should have asked the people taking his class, almost all of whom agreed that they didn't want Russell to go. Another thing is that probably some of the weird behavior that Russell exhibited was the way that he kind of picked on the MIT team for disqualification at the Brown comp, which is probably why Fil asked me like twenty times the details of our dq, but I just think that it's no big deal, and you learn to not do those steps. Additionally, the members of the MIT team that went to Columbia and did the same steps also got called out. I don't think most of us will feel right about this decision made by the execs unless they tell us the specifics, and even then I get the feeling we will still feel wronged. Russell can be a jerk sometimes, but he's still the best teacher, and MIT is making a awful mistake. Christine's great, but we should still keep Russell.

About the social

About the social Saturday evening. Andriy DJ'ed the first shift, and I was his assistant. I ok'ed a lot of his music, so for the most part I enjoyed it, though there were one or two songs he stuck in there that I hadn't heard which were quite boring (since he made the playlist last minute). Still, we were able to impart "I Will Survive" hustle on the dancefloor, so it was still pretty good. So I don't know when was the last time I was there for the whole entire social, but I was there for like five hours and exhausted by the end. But I also think part of the problem was Esya's DJ'ing. No offense to Esya, especially because I think she did a decent job in the past, but the DJ'ing during the second shift was really lackluster. Mostly because she kept getting up to dance, so the songs would last for like 4 minutes, and then there would be a pause of like 20 seconds before the next one came on. I think also because we had some trouble switching between the two computers that caused a delay, and also because Esya changed some of her music because it overlapped with ours, she also seemed a little bit flustered. But yeah, the problem is that when you have time in between dances to stop and think for a second, suddenly you realize you actually are kind of tired. Also, when the music isn't awesome pumping you-can't-resist-dancing-to-it-because-it's-so-catchy-or-you-love-the-song music, then at least for me I get bored. So, it was kind of tough. But I still had fun. I would love to come back to visit sometime during a social and DJ again, that was so fun the last time I did it.

Also, I danced with Ryan Kenner for the first time at the social, which was really very nice. He's been doing pro-am with Larinda for I don't know how long, so dancing smooth with him was kind of like a nice breath of fresh air - it was very, well, smooth. Even though I didn't know a lot of the steps, I could kind of guess what was going on (at least for waltz, the foxtrot wasn't as good). I really liked doing some new stuff, since Larinda always teaches the same old routines in class all the time. He also has a nice feeling for all of the details in the movement, the flow of everything. Jeff is a great leader, but the moves don't flow through his whole body in one cohesive unit, rather it tends to be more push and pull at times.

Anyway, another thing was that it was really sad for me when, during one song, I realized it was my last social. I really feel like I've come to feel at home on the team. The MIT team is really probably the best collegiate team in the US, and that's speaking objectively. I looked at the Berkeley website, and it looks like they don't even have professional coaches, which kind of makes it pointless for me to be on the team. I hope I can find something good out there, but as Yan said yesterday, "Once MITBDT, always MITBDT." I looked at the MIT competition results again and realized that, even though Vitaly and Polina are all the way in Cali and Ada is all the way in NY, their affiliate status still said MIT.

Dinner with MPD

I also had dinner with Mike at Ole last night. I liked the food I got this time, the skirt steak, better than what I got last time. Mike's sea bass was also delicious. Also, we ordered guacamole, which comes as a gigantic bowl, made right in front of you by a waiter with a cart. Then we went to Andriy's house where we drank tea and discussed the differences between towns and villages, and then those guys talked about something to do with politics in the Middle East. Mike is thinking of moving to China for a few years, which sounds really cool, but I realized that I've lost the whole "go live in a different country" desire. I think I've started to spread my roots here, and for some reason I've grown an immense desire for stability. That adventurous side has been reduced to vacation somewhere new every year status. I think I've already had the whole German immersion, French immersion, and partial-Russian immersion thing, and I'm getting a little bit tired of the awkward I-don't speak-the-language-well-enough thing. That's why vacations are good - you get it in small doses. I must really be getting old.

Hi guys. I looked back at my old journal entries in an effort to privatize entries where I sounded like a complete loser. I had to privatize many many of them, and I'm not even done... But I did come across quite a few hilarious things, which I will one day (when I have a stable working life and some extra reminiscing time) compile and post for my own edification. Some of my faves are a dream in which Carmen said, "Quit perving on my grandmother," and one where we guessed the very random "shards of Narsil" in a game of 20 questions (best part: after only like 6 questions Erica said, "is this from either Lord of the RIngs, Harry Potter, or Chronicles of Narnia?") Man, I've really written a lot in my day. Sorry my entries are always so long... I'm making a new New Year's pledge to stop sticking my foot in my mouth. Thanks for reading!

Is this part of a plot to sabotage my thesis writing? Why, yes it is... It's funny how time moves so slowly when you actually concentrate, but as soon as you get distracted for a moment, three hours just fly by... DAMN.

12/31-1/1 ~ Ringing in the New Year:

It snowed a little on Dec 31st, and I was afraid we would get snowed it, but it subsided after a little while, and Andriy and I were able to drive out to Newark to meet all the other peeps for the traditional Tony da Caneca dinner and Hoboken fireworks party. We got there early, but we spent about half an hour at the bar chatting, and then Carmen showed up and we all sat down and waited another half an hour for Adel's car to get there (very strange since Adel had apparently left their apartment at the same time. It was a little awkward since Andriy and I were sitting on the end and didn't know most everyone. I knew of course Carmen, Ryan, Lucia, and Maia, but it had been a while, so we didn't have too much to talk about across the table. Conversation got better as the night went on though, we met everyone, and we found some common ground as to the fact that Carly also had a crush on Eric Nellis after which we had momentary bonding. Nice to hear stuff about who's up to what now and reminisce a little.

Also Adel finally showed up with Keith and two random girls, one of which I think is his girlfriend and the other the girl's friend who has a tattoo saying "Virgo" on her boob, which was blatantly exposed. Apparently, they are in high school. I know so because when we mentioned Spice Girls, they said their parents wouldn't let them watch it or something because they were like 5 years old. Still, Andriy thought they looked like they were 35. And Virgo boob girl complained a lot randomly and said she didn't eat anything unless it was french fries and then ordered only a plate of plain rice. And I saw her in the bathroom later sniffing a lot, which was rather sketchy. She got a little bit less weird when I asked her which play she had seen in the city, and she said Equus, so we talked a little bit about how it's weird that Harry Potter guy is doing this and how it's a really messed up play.

I got a lobster and steak dinner, which was very good except I should have asked for the steak well done. I don't know where somewhere along the way I decided I'd start eating medium well, but I actually don't like it as much. I splashed butter all over myself, but the lobster was good. Also, it wasn't humongous like this giant "special" lobster that they brought out earlier, which looked like a big bug. Speaking of big bugs, I started reading this website weirdmeat.com... SO GROSS. I think the grossest thing is something that I saw on something like Road Rules or Fear Factor, which is this thing called "balut" that they eat in the Phillipines and Cambodia and other places, which is a 12-18 day old duckling embryo. Apparently you boil it and it's like a soft boiled egg, except with feathers and a head and stuff. BARF.

We finished dinner way too late and left after taking a picture at approximately 11:40pm or so. So we were in a super rush to get to the waterfront, and by the time we got to the area it was like 11:57pm. So Andriy and I ended up just pulling over and running out, just in time to hear people counting down nearby. So, an improvement over last year in that I was no longer in a car at midnight, but there was no real time to process the event until it had happened already. No grapes =(. We spent another 15 minutes taking pictures of fireworks from across the river (looked like Brooklyn) and freezing our butts off. Nobody else was around because we got out at a different location from everyone else, and when we were done they had all gone to Carmen's already. Then we got super lost for about 45 minutes in Jersey City trying to find the place and then trying to find parking.

The apartment itself was very nice actually, clean and cozy with nice artwork all around. I was expecting much worse for Jersey City, though there was still a little bit of sketchiness in the neighborhood. When we came back to the car the next day there was some guy bent over the front. I just saw his red jacket at first, and I was afraid at first that there was one of those wheel locks on the car. When I saw the guy, he was bent over tying his shoe, but it was really suspicious, like he only pretended to tie his shoes because he saw us coming. Also, he kept looking around. Then we politely told him we needed to pull out, and he kind of got out of the way.

The night was fun. Some drinking, taking pictures, and then I smoked weed for the first time ever. It wasn't very exciting. We smoked a joint and then a pipe, and I didn't feel very much of anything, although I had only had maybe five hits. Also, it tasted kind of bad, but I might have been doing it wrong. Still, interesting to try it. Keith was in Adel's room with Adel and the two girls. Speculation was that he would try to hook up with Virgo boobs, but I guess that didn't happen ("At what point does the nerdiness balance out with how much older he is?") =P. Then Geoff, Carly's boyfriend, apparently puked everywhere, and Lucia cleaned it all up. I have never had to clean up puke before, thank goodness. And then Mikey tried to braid my hair, and Lucia made nachos, and that's pretty much what I remembered from that. Finally we all laid out on the floor, and went to sleep. I woke up several times during the night (weed?), and every time I got up Liz was just sitting around, since I guess she just got up at 8 and took a shower and such.

1/1 ~ Visiting NYC

In the morning Andriy and I decided not to go out for lunch with everyone and instead walked to the Grove St PATH to head into WTC to meet Dima Sigaev. I hadn't seen WTC in like 5 or so years, so we took some pictures like the tourists we are. We drank tea at Dima's and looked at his (now) two cats. The one cat was really friendly and innocent looking, and Dima kept saying how Si-Hui brought the cat home from the shelter the day before and he hated that cat, and we couldn't understand why. Then the cat started terrorizing the other, smaller Siamese cat. He was jumping on him and chasing him into corners. It was still a very cute cat though.

Finally their other friends arrived, Vova and Cyril and Cyril's girlfriend (wife?) Yuriko. Then we went on the longest search for food ever because everything was closed, and we ended up at South Street Seaport at this Mexican place. I was super hungry, but I didn't mind because we kept busy taking pictures. Si-Hui showed up as well, I was surprised she remembered me, since I haven't seen her in probably two years. I wasn't in the mood for Mexican so I got a chicken sandwich that was pretty good.

Then we went back to the apartment and had some coffee and cake, and then the boys talked for ages while Yuriko fell asleep, Si-Hui went on her computer, and I took lots and lots of pictures of cats and the skyline. The apartment actually has a great view. Finally I got bored and it was getting late, so Andriy and I left for home for dinner.

1/2 ~ Some movies at home

Nothing interesting, but Andriy and I went to the library and rented some movies, and we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (also leading up to me looking up weirdmeat.com) and then The Departed with my parents. The Departed is such a crazy well-made movie, but a little disappointing at the end because it's not really a happy satisfying ending.

1/3 ~ Back to Boston and David's surprise party

We left for Boston at 10am. On our way we pulled over at Liberty State Park and took some family photos, which I think we haven't done in a really long time because I never go on vacation with my family anymore. It was nice, even though it was freezing cold. Andriy and I took Greyhound because then we could wait inside instead of at Chinatown, and the ticket were only $20. I still would have liked to take the Bolt Bus though, try out the wifi and plus and extra legroom and stuff. It was kind of a pain because we had to walk to the Port Authority, but the weather was nice and I didn't mind the sites. We made it on time with 25 minutes to spare, but for the second time (happened to us once over Thanksgiving), we were two people with only one seat left on the bus. We had to wait another 30 minutes for the extra bus, but it was okay because we got to sit together and the bus driver was nice. Actually, he was so over polite, I don't know if he drove a limo or something before. He was funny too, esp when the bus ran out of toilet paper. It took us like 5.5 hours to get to Boston though, since there was traffic, and also the driver stopped to check when the handicap door apparently came out of its socket a little. Rest stop at Arby's, pretty yummy. Also, we watched the movie Phonebooth on the bus, which was a bit cliched ala Saw type movie but less gory, but okay. I went home to drop off my stuff for a while and then biked to Andriy's so that we could head to Esya's party.

Even though we missed the surprise for David, it was still really fun. Talked to Helen a bit, who was regaling me with knowledge about how Pixar is awesome and she should stop being in finance. Robin also told me a bit, since he's from Palo Alto. Then Esya pulled me in to dance, but I was a bit tired and not drunk enough, so I danced a little and then watched while her roommate - who looked frumpy and was in these mismatching pajamas - started going crazy dancing to Toxic ("She's never done that before." - Esya). Also, Eileen was all over some guy and then hands all over Robin later... maaan never seen Eillen like that before either. Then I drank a few alcoholic root beer floats and we took birthday shots, and then I started dancing a lot, mostly with Jimmy who also loves Britney. It got even better once we took over choosing the music. We sat around for a while, I forget what we were doing, but then Dima was in the bathroom for a very long time until after we left. And Andriy apparently had drank with Dima (tequila out of the bottle? gross), so he felt like crap the entire next day. Somehow we made it home safely on our bikes.

1/4 - 1/7 ~ Too much of nothing

Basically all I've done since then is concentrate on working and also looking through craiglist posts trying to find housing in the SF bay area. Also, I did read about weird meats, and Andriy and I watched the movie Stepbrothers, which is the weirdest movie ever. And we went to Whole Foods and got some food and then ate it. That's about it. Cheers!

Since I was so bad about blogging this year, I can't really do what Melike did (first sentence from each month). But it will be one of my resolutions to do a better job next year. Next year promises to be exciting and new, and hopefully working will give me some more time to my own thoughts. I wish my hard drive hadn't crashed so that I would still have my iCal entries to remind me of what happened this year, but I'll try my best... Also, resolutions which I will hopefully keep next year (I failed miserably this past year, so I won't even bring it up).

Year in review:

School:
- Taught two more successful semesters of 6.042. Particularly enjoyed this past semester with Tom Leighton - the style was a lot more like when Srini taught, which was why I liked it in the first place. Made friends with all the TAs, made friends with a lot of students as well. Learned LaTeX.
- Attended a bunch of workshops for StarLogo, which were fun. In retrospect, it was a fun project to be working on, I just wish I had more time during the school year to actually commit to it, and that I would have been more focused during the summer and got more done. Cross my fingers that I'll finish by the end of January.
- Had a blast in advanced graphics and Fredo's awesome awesome computational photography class. Too bad for hot professor not getting tenure and moving away though...
- Finally took the math classes needed, including 18.06. A little embarrassing to sit in front of some of my students during tests, but that's ok. Being so old made the class pretty easy. My TA was also so nice, and cute in an awkward get-chalk-all-over-himself-then-try-to-wipe-it-away-with-his-sweater-and-then-upon-failing-clutching-the-sweater-insecurely-to-hide-the-chalk kind of way. Also, 18.085 where Gil Strang signed my textbook - adorable!
- Got straight A's in all of my graduate classes.

Jobs:
- Attended a career fair for the first time and volunteered. Learned how to schmooze with company reps, even though it ended up being pointless. Went to a fancy SWE dinner at the Hilton and chatted up some more people for fun.
- Considered going into consulting and went to some case interview workshops, which also ended up being pointless. Bought my first suit and interviewed at BCG. Interview went well, even though I didn't get the job. It was interesting to see a bit of the corporate world.
- Did my first and only all day second-round interview with a video game company in Cambridge. About six hours, including lunch and some fun conversation. I also had to take and hour and a half written test. I think I failed that, and I didn't get the job. But it was also a good experience to go through what most people go through with their job searches - all that stuff that UAT was talking about that I had never heard of doing only biology and UROPs.
- I only really applied and interviewed with those two places and Pixar, so all things considered I was really lucky to get a job. But I just didn't have the energy in me to apply everywhere when all I wanted was to work at Pixar. My dad said I should be spanked because when he was applying for jobs he sent out like a hundred resumes because it was during the depression of the early 90's. Then again, I guess there is something to be said for knowing what I wanted so that I could put all my efforts into securing it...

Dance:
- I don't know much about my latin and standard, which haven't really improved much competitively, but I feel like it's improved a bit technically so I'm still somewhat satisfied.
- I bought some new dresses. Those were fun =P.
- Jeff and I won every single smooth competition since we started competing together (after that first accidental time where I was supposed to dance with Phillip), with the exception of MIT 08, where we got something like fourth. This includes silver at Brown 07 and BU 08, and gold at Harvard Invitational 08, Brown 08, and Tufts 08. This means that we're now placed out of gold and into open. It's really too bad I don't get to stick around to dance open with Jeff, though we would need a lot of work to get our technique up to par.
- DJ'ed ballroom socials twice. First time was kind of difficult because I was using CD's, and I got really nervous the whole time and screwed up a couple of times, but I still had Shlomo tell me I was one of the best DJ's he's heard in a long time. Second time was this past month for the holiday social, and it went off flawlessly because I had chosen all of the music carefully on my computer. Songs that I'm proud of introducing to the dance floor include "Santa Baby" by ? (foxtrot), "Why" by Annie Lenox (rumba), and "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa (chacha). I got a lot of compliments about songs that people loved.
- I did dance troupe last spring semester. Just one dance, but I started to feel kind of awkward because of the whole knowing students thing. I saw the show this past fall semester, which had a lot of nice contemporary pieces and sort of wished I was still doing it, but I know it would have taken up too much time, and it was fun to watch anyway. Still waiting until I have time to learn some bboying, though Robin wants to take a class during IAP which I might want to join in on.

Vacations:
- Went to Europe in January to visit friends. Went to the French Alps, around Germany, Krakow, and Vienna.
- Went to Costa Rica with Andriy in August. Saw volcanos, hot springs, waterfalls, rainforest, and sandy beaches.
- Took a trip to New Hampshire, where Andriy and I got lost in the middle of the dark snowy woods.
- Went to Maine to take lots of pictures of leaves.
- Went to Martha's Vineyard for the first time with Andriy's friend Alex. Water was cold but bike riding was fun.

Shows:
- So You Think You Can Dance! Also, SYTYCD Australia, Canada, and Ukraine, which were all awesome. Got to meet the dancers again this year with Kristin and Jacinda, even though it was freezing.
- Romeo and Juliet, the ballet. An awesome Valentine's Day thing, and the dancing was one of my faves.
- Cinderella, the ballet. Cute, but I didn't like it as much as Romeo and Juliet. The lead was pretty good, but I didn't like her final dress. I loved the stepsisters though.
- Chicago. Really excellent. Great singing, dancing, acting.

Other:
- Old C3 friends came to visit over the summer, and we had a good time around Boston.
- Did couchsurfing for the first time and met two really cool Polish guys who have since no longer responded to my emails in typical European fashion.
- Made some new awesome friends at 165 this year, when all these new people moved in who like to party. Too bad Lev had to go though, I miss having him around. Started having some pumping parties in our basement, thanks to Gabi always bringing tons of her friends.
- Fourth of July on our awesome rooftop with Nora's friends and sparklers and then watching Cars afterwards with Sally, Neil, Rob Wang, Simon, and Andriy.
- Started hanging out with ballroom people a lot more, like Dima and Olga and Esya. Really, a lot of Russians, thanks to Andriy. Went to both a Finnish sauna and a Russian sauna (banya) for the first time. Also, became better friends with Eileen, who is awesome.
- Learned a lot about photography and played around a lot on Andriy's DSLR. Went out on multiple picture taking trips around the area.
- Discovered some great restaurants: Longhorn Steakhouse (near Fenway movie theater), Fin's Japanese Sushi and Grill (Kenmore), Blue Room (Kendall Square), amongst others.
- Voted for the first time and got caught up in the whole election whirlwind. Obama winning was really a momentous occasion in the history of our country, and it was cool to be a part of it.

Okay, that's all I can remember, but I'll add more if I think of anything.

Resolutions:

- Journal every day when possible and keep updated on days that I missed.
- Start doing yoga and pilates (I should be able to do this thanks to facilities at Pixar, hopefully it will help with flexibility).
- Learn Russian (not just words like "butt").
- Learn web design (Maya and Python will likely just come as a result of work).
- Organize old journals and pictures and stuff.

I think this is all that is feasible.

Here is the whole Pixar story:

I had some good luck that I was at a staff meeting, when Bill told Chieu and I to go to the EWT Trading session (which was in a half an hour) because all graduating students got a free iPod shuffle for giving them resumes (I gave it to my dad). Incidentally, I ran into Brett from my graphics class who was also trying to get a free shuffle. He had worked for Pixar the summer before and subsequently invited me to the Pixar intern dinner a couple of days later. So I basically got four hours of delicious expensive food from the Blue Room and awesome casual conversation with other interns and "Undergraduate Program" attendees like Rachel, as well as with the two current TDs and Tricia the college recruiter, who also happens to love So You Think You Can Dance...

I didn't realize they would be conducting the first interviews, so I didn't even feel the need to suck up. I put together a decent demo reel, and I got a second interview. It was a phone interview, and I felt a bit uncomfortable because you know when you sometimes try to laugh and joke a little to break the ice? I tried to do that, and they interviewers didn't really laugh back, so I felt super awkward and started babbling the whole time and said a lot of things where, while I was saying them, I was kicking myself thinking, "Stop saying that, you sound so stupid." The interview was also only 15 minutes long, and I felt like I didn't get to say anything interesting about myself. I was so depressed after that interview that I talked to Keith and Sally and then got together people from 165 to drink and play board games in my room. So I ended up drunk and laughing at the fact that we were playing the Lost game, except that I didn't remember the rules and none of them had seen the show before (I had a German, a Brasilian, and two Koreans there...). We also kind of played this game called Dirty Minds, where there are all these clues that make you think dirty things, but the actual thing is something totally innocent. Also, that was the first time I met Joern, who is awesome.

I got worried after a while of no response, and I emailed Tricia. Finally she emailed me back, and my hand was shaking so hard to read the email, but all it said was that there were two supervising TDs who weren't there at the last interview who might want to talk to me. I was so relieved, I felt like I was getting a second chance. Then, a while later, they finally called me. I decided the best way to prepare was to watch Monsters, Inc. to remind me why I wanted to work there in the first place, since I figured the one thing that I could do was at least be enthusiastic on the phone. Those two guys called me right on time, and they laughed a lot, and they were so nice, even when I gave a somewhat iffy answer to one question and then revised my statement when they mentioned something. Actually, I think my revision showed at least a little that I could think about the problem more critically, so I'm not sure it was a bad thing. Also, I was able to answer the other questions that they gave me, and they also asked me about myself and I got to tell my biology-turned-computer-graphics story. The interview was 30 minutes, and I felt great afterwards.

Then it was another week and a half of no answer, and I got really concerned. Tricia said they were still making decisions. But finally on my way home to NJ in the car with Dima I got a call from Tricia that they accepted me. I'm really glad they called actually because as soon as I saw the number on my phone I knew it would be good, since they likely wouldn't call to reject me. Also, I was totally not expecting it, so I didn't have time to get nervous. I know if it would have been in an email I might have had a heart attack seeing it in my inbox. I finally got the offer letter right on Christmas Day. It took two whole months of interviewing to get there, but it's finally over!

You know, say what you will, but I really think someone up there is watching out for me. I'm just considering all of the different things that happened that just seem way too lucky. I spent so long stressed out about finding an MEng project, looking at bioMEMS and stuff, but if I would have found one, I would be in a totally different field right now. It was because of that that I reevaluated what I wanted to do. Then when I started looking for jobs I was considering this consulting stuff as a backup route, but I not getting the BCG job made me wonder if I really wanted to do that at all. Then with the video game company, if I would have gotten that job, I would have had two months of not being able to accept and waiting for Pixar and then I probably would have been very stressed out. Then with the luck of running into Brett, without which I think I would have felt a lot more nervous and a lot less comfortable with the interviews. And, I'm not sure how much this influenced their decision, but I think I really clicked with the whole gang when I was at dinner with them. So I don't know, I kind of feel like everything that happened really led me to this final position. I think this is what I've wanted all along, I just wish I would have been smart enough to realize it earlier!

Um yeah, I'm watching Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (uncensored) with my parents - AWKWARD! They are laughing way too hard at the "Osama Bin Laden's beard" thing... Anyway, seems I haven't written all semester, but hopefully I will have more time and more fun things to write about once I start work... AT PIXAR!

I'm really going to miss Boston. Over the last five and a half years it really became my home. Even after all my undergraduate friends left, I've gotten used to hanging out with Andriy and his Russian friends and ballroom people and my housemates. I feel like I've settled down, and now I have to leave. At the same time I'm really excited to see a new place - not to mention free passes to Disneyland! I'm sure I'll get used to it and love it soon enough, but right now all I have is anxiety. I wish that I had at least a little more time to just sit back, relax, and enjoy Boston.

I'm just so glad and relieved that the whole job search thing has come to an end. I'll be happy when I finally get some stability in my life. Now there's only one thing left between Pixar and me, thesis... Yuck. But let's not think about that.

So I was really tired like an hour ago. But then I took a shower and sat down under a blanket on my couch to copy over my 18.085 hw. I put on Counting Crows radio on Pandora and, I don't know why Counting Crows does this to me, it put me in a really zen moment. I just felt suddenly very calm about everything, and it's difficult to describe because I think it's one of those things that you can only have by yourself. There's a slight breeze from outside that feels very slightly cool, with the blanket smooth on my skin, I just feel totally refreshed. The music makes me think of all of those peaceful times of the past, and the way that it echos from my computer around my room, I really love the way I set up my room. I think the fact that I'm copying a pset by hand, no computers involved, remind me of younger college years when everything was so simple. It was really Maroon 5 "She Will Be Loved" that put me in this mood. It all gave me this feeling of freshman year, when it was Christmas time, and we went shopping and decorated everything. Also of high school when we drove around listening to Chili Peppers. I miss that. Feels nice.

18.085 is interesting because for some weird reason all of these old Conner 3 people are in the class. Like Spike, Emzo, Alisha, Holly, Amanda, and Gina and Jeff from Conner 5. So on Thursday evening, I went back to Conner 3 in a rare event and saw everybody at study break and ate Ken's beer butt chicken and was introduced with Alisha as old alumni. It was totally random that Alisha was there btw, apparently she's back from Spain, but I never knew it until I saw Spike's email about 18.085. But it was such a surreal experience, we went up to Conner 5, 513 suite, and sat down around the table doing the pset. I haven't done that in a couple of years now, I felt all young again. And then I remembered why I didn't get good grades in undergrad - I suck at math. Doing the pset with people without having looked at it beforehand was stupid, it was much slower and I understood less. But the first part was fairly easy, so it was okay. Then we got to the second part and basically went into crazy stupid mode, because he hadn't covered it in lecture yet, so we just pretended to read the chapter. People started leaving, and it ended up being just me, Spike, Emzo, and Gina. After Gina tried in vain to read the chapter (and Spike wrote MATLAB code called ginafinishesreading.m, which outputs "boo" for false and "yay, spike gets a gin and tonic" for true), she finally gave up and made us all gin and tonics. I didn't know Gina before very well, but she's actually pretty cool. So we just sat and drank gin and tonics with half finished psets.

Incidentally, i bought the 18.085 book from Gilbert Strang directly. It's $90 everywhere, including amazon, but the link that Strang has on the course webpage is to the publisher directly for $74. The contact email was his email though, so I just emailed him, and for some reason it was $80, but I figured it was okay and didn't want to argue. Gina kept saying, "He's awesome," and Holly said he was like Bob Barker. But he's written like all the major linear algebra textbooks, so I guess he's kind of a big deal, because when I went to pick up the textbook, he was really nice asking me about myself, and then he said, "Would you like me to sign it?" So now I have a math textbook that says, "To Ling, best wishes, Gilbert Strang." On the one hand I thought it was cute, but on the other hand I just kept thinking, that was really weird? I guess I was never big enough of a math fan to want my textbooks signed, but I guess it's pretty cool. It just makes me wonder who these people are who do get their textbooks signed...

First 6.042 lecture was really cool. I'm liking Tom Leighton (did I mention that is like freakin cofounder of Akamai?). In class we watched Colbert Report, when Colbert started talking about Poincare's conjecture and "donut mathematics". Then Leighton talked about the proof of the irrationality of square root of 2, and he said the proof was actually discovered by the Pythagoreans, who worshipped math as a religion. Apparently the Pythagoreans had two gods, the god of finite things who was good and the god of infinite things who was evil. They thought that nothing was irrational because irrationality is infinite and therefore evil. Then they found out this number that they use all the time (*ahem* Pythagorean theorem *ahem*) was actually irrational, and Leighton described this as, "finding out that out of the ten commandments, nine were commandments and one was actually written by the devil." He then said that they tried to cover it up, but then one guy leaked it, and they killed him. Leighton was like, "It's hard to imagine now getting killed over the square root of two..."

Then we had recitation, which was okay, though my favorite class is still so far fall '07. We'll see how it develops, but I think it's the classroom setup that is more for lecture and less for groupwork. I liked how my icebreaker that I always use (describe one interesting thing about yourself that is not related to academics) always brings out the most random and awesome facts about people. Then today, if this is even possible, I had about thirty people show up for office hours. THIRTY. I was in my little office which holds maybe four people, then we moved across the hall and people were spilling into the hallway, and then we moved all the way down the hall to my actual recitation room. It became like me solving problems on the board, which was okay because the point of these first problems is for them to practice proof writing anyway. But it was still tiring. I had to do two hours because Bill wasn't able to be there today, and for some stupid reason everyone else put their office hours on Monday right before the pset is due. I don't know, but I would personally hope that students were finishing their psets before a couple of hours before it is due.

Friday night I went with Mike to see Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay at LSC. I haven't been to LSC in a while, but it was fun. The movie was funny in all its Harold and Kumar totally random weird funny way. I downloaded it and White Castle for Andriy to see, since he was staying home sick.

Finally, Saturday evening I dragged my ass to the ballroom social. Andriy and I went to Koreana (delicious), and after we got home it started to rain really hard. But unfortunately I had to work the desk shift at 11pm, so I made it there soaking wet from the rain, sat down, and danced a little bit afterwards. I did finally get to meet this Ed Fan character though. He's actually pretty cool.

Tonight we also had run-throughs. It's actually been about a month since I've been to run-throughs, so it's a little tough, but it was fun. Highlight was when Armin played some samba music that was vaguely like salsa, and Wei and I started dancing salsa, which seamlessly transitioned into samba. That was awesome. But it'll probably be some work to get back in shape. I was very tired afterwards.

So btw, and addendum to feeling old - You can feel young again by surrounding yourself with old people! That was one good thing about going out on a house outing, I was like the youngest one there. Also, like everyone I hang out with is older than me, and people on the ballroom team are like in their 40s. So that helps. It's only when I'm on campus with students that I'm like wtf.

Also, yesterday we had a 6.042 meeting with famous Tom Leighton. Actually, he's really nice, and at least we the TAs don't have to do EVERYTHING like putting together psets and quizzes like every week. He teaches differently, and it's really refreshing to have this change for sure. He's very respectful of everyone's ideas, not like Prof Meyer, who tended to really like to stick to his own ideas and got confused when you told him otherwise. I'm interested to see how this semester turns out, I think it'll probably be more like when I took it with Srini Devadas who was soooooo awesome.

Finally, Russell's class yesterday, we did some cool complicated routine which was fun. I really like routines where we shape to the right, because I'm always wanting to do that anyway, so I think I'm better at that than staying in normal dance hold. Then I practiced with Andriy for a while, which was really out of the ordinary, but it was kind of productive so I'm glad.

And then I got back into a bad habit - watching TV! Even though I don't have TV anymore, apparently Prison Break is back. I saw the first episode, and I guess it's well known knowledge that they faked-out Sara Tancredi's death and now she's suddenly back and alive. I think that's kind of lame, and the show kind of lost it's charm after they broke out of the first prison. Not entirely their fault - the whole awesomeness of it was when he had everything planned and then looked on his tattoos for help - but now it's all weird, and they killed off some of last season's character real quick. Still, I'm interested to see where that goes. Ditto for all other shows.

I guess maybe I might do a summary of summer stuff, but for now let's talk about school starting. I'd rather not dwell on the anxiety of upcoming life decisions and things to get done - I wanna keep this an optimistic lj!

Monday night the new tenants from 165 all met to have a house gathering. We didn't know where to go, and after wandering all down Newbury and back up Boylston, we ended up at Cactus Club. The only people left from the original gang are me, Sandra, and Yale. We had some fun reminiscing about stuff that happened, and I realized that even though we didn't have much of a house community, we did still have some nice memories together (like when I ran into Sandra on my bicycle, or when Mike Sidorov thought that Lev was some old guy sleeping on the couch).

The people who went out were two Korean students (one guy one girl whose names I will butcher), a German guy named Matheas, a Brazilian girl named Gaby, and the three of us. They were really nice, and I finally got the guts to speak a little German with the Matheas. I found it started to come back more naturally as I spoke, but then we went back to English cuz the Korean guy couldn't understand. At Cactus Club I got some guacamole (which Sandra had never heard of, so I was glad to spread the good word) and a passionfruit margarita. We were out for about two hours and had a great time. Then when we got back we went up to the rooftop and sat around enjoying the nighttime air.

I registered yesterday and chatted a bit with Prof Freeman and my "assistant advisor" who is this MEng who is probably younger than me, but it was cool having her around because I always think one on one talks are kind of awkward. I spilled some doubts about my future, and they were like, "Don't worry!" I always doubt that they really understand the my dismal situation, but positive words are what I need, so I decided that I need to just boost my academic self-esteem. Also, I read this article in the tech written by some senior that just basically said to relax and enjoy because we'll be fine. That was really really nice actually, I thought to write her a facebook message to say that she had made my day, but then I thought that might be creepy.

Last night Dima and Olga came over to Andriy's house and drank some beer and talked about stuff. I had class this morning at 10am, so I went to sleep at 1am, but they didn't get to sleep until like 5am, and when I got back from class today they were all still sleeping, and when they woke up they all looked super tired. Olga just got back from Africa, so it was really interesting to hear about how different life is over there.

I'm finally taking 18.06 after dropping it two semesters in a row. Since I basically don't have a choice, and I figured it might be useful... but at least I like the lecturer this time better than the one from two semesters ago. The only thing I lament is the fact that there are all these young undergrads like some of my former students in the class, and sitting in it I just feel like, "I am so over this." The whole style of the class is just very young feeling, I guess in a sense I am ready for more advanced things. I had 18.085 right afterwards with Gilbert Strang, who is great. He's like this old guy who kind of has an eye twitch, but he's so cute and funny and a great lecturer. Today's class was like a really quick linear algebra review (which is ironic because my other class is intro to linear algebra), but I'd encountered a lot of that stuff before, and I liked how he went about giving meaning to the matrices, which I suppose is what this whole class is supposed to be about anyway.

So the most fitting moment today, right before I ran into Bao and we talked about how old we were, was when I passed by WILG giving out their traditional free cookies in the middle of the stairway to building 16. I took a cookie, and the girl tried to give me a rush calendar, and I just had to say, "Oh, honey, I'm way too old for that."

 Hey guys, I'm posting a new travel blog. I'm in the process of writing about Costa Rica, but in the future I'd like to do back entries on past travels.

Check it out:
lingdingtraveling.blogspot.com

So last last weekend Erica and Chen came to town, so a lot of a lot of stuff happened. I was pretty much exhausted by the end of it, but it was fun anyway. I haven't done so much stuff in a short period of time in a while - I think my fun stuff stamina is going down. Before that there was also a couple of assorted things that happened that I guess I'll talk about first, and some stuff this weekend too. I like summer because stuff actually happens...

5/27 (Tuesday):
Jaime going-away dinner and board games

We went to Border Cafe, and there was like no wait, and it was awesome. Most awesome part about it: Steph Wang. I haven't seen Steph Wang in ages, so I forced her to sit next to me and monopolized her time. We drank margaritas and I ate the Argentina style steak but not much of it because I ate too many chips. I told Jaime he should've made himself disappear for a few months too, so that everyone would want to monopolize him too. Apparently Steph is working for a medical consulting company next year around Cambridge, so she'll still be around. I hope she forgoes med school, but knowing her she'll probably end up going anyway.

After dinner only Sally and Jaime and I went to Sally's place, which was lame, because then we only had three people and couldn't even play taboo. So we ended up playing Trivial Pursuit, which we all kind of suck at, except for the science and technology questions. And it lasted forever with Sally having all her wedges, landing on the middle after like 5 tries, and missing the science and technology question yet again. Finally we just let her stay there until she answered a question correctly. Longest game ever.

5/30 (Friday):
Lawrence, final session

Thank goodness it was our final time at Lawrence, it was getting to be very annoying because now I had to put together the lesson plan because Daniel was working on bugs for the new build. I had put together something more complicated for the last time, but this time I pulled back and had an obstacle course where they could do one obstacle at a time piece by piece. The first class was difficult, it was the younger class and had more people, so the ones we got to helping got through almost the whole thing, whereas others basically gave up and one kid started playing solitare. Second class had only four kids because it was the seniors and they were having senior cut day or something like that. Almost all of them got through all of it. It was definitely not what we wanted out of it, and I felt bad that the kids weren't able to get something really awesome out of it, but oh well, we learned from it at least.

Brown Sugar and Indiana Jones

Andriy and I went to Brown Sugar down near Fenway for dinner, and then we went to the Fenway theater to see Indiana Jones. I liked the movie overall, even though the theater that we got was surprisingly a lot smaller than when we went there for Narnia. Here's what I thought:

6/6 (Friday):
Aquarium

Erica arrived Thursday night, late, cuz her flight was delayed. On Friday after we got up we decided to go to the aquarium, since she'd never been before (totally wrong, aquarium is awesome!!!). We got into Gov't Center and looked around for food, saw some political thing going on, masses of elementary school kids on some field trip, and finally went off on a side road to find this small place that sold subs (w/ chips and drink) for $6.50. The place was totally packed, probably from business people who worked in the financial district on their lunch break. It must be crazy working in that sub place because there were like four people squished at a register, with two taking orders and the most chaotic screaming of orders and stuff going on. The workers were all loud with Boston accents and called people "hun" even though they looked like they were teenagers. Crazy. We found two bar stools by the window where we sat and modeled their subs for passing onlookers.

Aquarium prices rose! Now it costs twenty bucks to go, and we chipped in another five to see the IMAX 3D Deep Sea movie. It was a cute movie though, voiced by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. Interesting information about fish cleaning stations, and how sharks protect little fish from tuna and stuff, etc. I just don't really care for 3D movies because, though the effect is cool, they generally make me feel sort of woozy as time goes on. There must be some way to create 3D technology that doesn't do that, but I guess they haven't developed it yet.

The aquarium itself was cool as ever, I love looking at fish and taking lots of pictures of them. Plus we went through the Amazing Jellies exhibit, which I had seen in its development stages when I went with the IAP museum class for Terrascope freshman year.

Finding Nemo

After watchign the IMAX movie Erica and I wanted to watch Finding Nemo. So at night we walked all the way for about an hour to Andriy's place, since we somehow missed the SafeRide, and met Sally on the way. We ate Punjabi Dhaba and watched Finding Nemo on Andriy's projector. I hadn't seen it in a while, but it was just as good this time around. I still love Monster's Inc, but it's such a classic anyway. Andriy played the Pixar making the movie bit at the end, and that was kind of stressful because whenever I see anything about Pixar I start thinking about job finding and stuff, and that is really annoying.

6/7 (Saturday):
Henrietta's Table/ IHOP/ shopping on Newbury

I had Russell in the morning, and I left after advanced class to bike to Henrietta's Table for brunch. Mike and Chen were already there, and we had to wait a while for everyone else to show up, so we waited around the bar and watched Hilary Clinton's stepping out of the competition speech. Then when everyone got there, we sat down for breakfast, and turns out they stopped serving breakfast at 10:30am and only had a la carte brunch, which was minimum $17. We ended up going across the street to IHOP, which was cheaper, but yucky. I really don't like IHOP very much, but I had to give in to everyone else, plus the fact that I didn't want to spend so much money (though IHOP should really be cheaper than it is...) I think it was worse because my throat was really sore, so the entire time I had to drink a lot of water.

I went to Larinda's afterwards, then biked back out to Newbury St where everyone else was shopping. I walked around H&M for a little while and ended up buying a shirt that I wore to the club that night. Jaime put on a lot of bracelets. We went to Guess after that, where we mostly sat around and I think Erica tried on clothes but I'm not sure. Jaime put on male bling and sunglasses. Then we went to Filene's Basement, and I bought a dress. Oh yeah, and before I got there Chen bought a $500 bag. Scary! FInally, we split ways to prep for clubbing at night.

Border Cafe

I took a shower, and then Erica spent a really long time finding clothes to get ready for clubbing, which I found really funny because she brought like two weeks worth of clothes but still hadn't packed anything good for clubbing. Finally we got to Border Cafe half an hour late, and everyone was waiting, and we had to wait extra for tables since they probably gave away ours. Food was good though, so it was worth it. Mike and I shared the chicken/beef fajitas, which was surprisingly totally enough for us, and I was actually so full afterwards I was uncomfortable. I think that was because I ate way too many chips and then had Erica's leftover rice and some of her veggies. We also had the best waiter ever, he was such a cute little redhead, and he looked like he could've been a redneck too, he had this huge gap or stain or something in between his two front teeth, and he had some joke with Jaime after Jaime got a coke, strawberry margarita, AND water, causing Jaime to go "OHHHHH up top!"

UnderBar

After dinner we went walking around trying to find this club UnderBar, which was annoying because I really had to pee and also was in pain from eating too much. We finally found it with this tiny hidden sign below the big awning Caprice, which was really random. We went in and this guy Jay said to tell them that we were "Sam +3 and Anna +1 on Jay's VIP guest list" so that we could get in reduced price. When we finally got to go in, Erica and Chen aka Anna +1 were able to get in, but Mike said he was Sam +3, and the woman asked him for ID, which was really sad because that meant earch of us had to pay five dollars more for regular admission. I saw Jay later and told him, and he ran off in disgust like he was going to get our money back, but we never saw him again.

So we probably got in around 10pm, and the actual hip hop area didn't open until 11:15pm or so, so we had to sit around on these lounge chairs by the bar for an hour. Jaime gave Sally a foot massage, which I thought was gross, and we took a picture of it. Also, I nearly fell asleep. Finally we got to go in, and it took a while for the party to get started. There were a bunch of people in the room next door, which was playing techno music but was a lot bigger and eventually had these dancers in skimpy clothing jumping around on platforms, but we stayed in the smaller hip hop room getting drinks from the cute bartender. They were playing some good music when we first got in and nobody was dancing, but then once people started dancing the DJ started (for some bizarre reason) to play only Indian music for like a half an hour. It was fun at first because we could pretend to know bhangra, but it got old. Finally they got onto a stretch of some good music, including Justin, Timbaland, and PCD, so Erica and I got up and danced on the platform for a little while. Then when the music became only Latino music, I danced salsa with Mike for a little while, which I must say I take my hat off to him because the salsa classes he took paid off and he actually was pretty good.

We finally went home at 2am, and Sally, Jaime, Erica, and I sat around for a while waiting for a cab. The weather was nice, so I didn't mind lying down on the stone around the thing that they plant flowers in. Finally we got a cab, and he played music so loud, I think because he was trying to stay awake...

6/8 (Sunday)
Dim Sum

We headed out to Chinatown for dim sum on Sunday. Steph Wang and Spike and Emzo were also there. It was good to have Chen back because she is our mommy and takes care of all the ordering for us, so we just sat and ate in happiness. Erica was skeptical about the turnip cake, and then she ate it and loved it, and I consider that a success in my book to convert Erica to eating something. It was yummy and I got to eat porridge. It's been a long time since I've had dim sum.

Sex and the City

Then we went to go see Sex and the City, and Mike and Jaime came with us, which was interesting. I looked over at Mike a couple of times during the movie, and he was leaned back like he was about to fall asleep the whole time. I saw him check his watch once too. The movie was definitely a little slow, with a lot of fashion highlighted, but I enjoyed it because I wanted to see what would happen to the characters, so I think that if you were not invested in them to begin with it would be a little more difficult. Also, there was this one sex scene where I heard Mike go, "Oh my goodness," which I thought was funny. More notes:

Also fun was before the movie, when we went around to the different statues and cutouts in the movie theater and took pictures of them. I have a nice one of me kissing Wall-E, and one of me and Kung Fu Panda kicking Mike in the stomach and head, and one of Erica and me sitting on a bench with Wall-E and his love.

Board Games and Dinner

After the movie we went to Mike's place for board games. We stopped at the supermarket at Porter Square and bought some Klondike bars to eat, though I already had a Coffee Coolata. Then we walked for a while to get to Mike's. When we were there, we spent a little while sitting around, with Erica and Sally reading magazines, and everyone else doing something, and I was just kind of sitting there, a little bored, wanting to go home and be on my computer. I was a little exhausted from having so much stuff planned and being around people for such a long period of time, I was getting used to just me and Andriy all the time, and I was getting a little cranky because of it.

Finally we got to playing board games, so we started by playing Wits and Wagers until Chen had to leave. I was the worst at that game, I didn't know a lot of those answers, so I'd be pretty far off, and then I was bad at guessing too. But that's okay. Chen left and Jaime took a series of pictures of her going down the stairs and out the door to her cab, which he later made into a youtube video that she forced him to take down. It was a good video though...

Then we played Settlers of Catan again, which was immensely annoying actually. The reason was that none of my numbers, which should have been very common, like 6, never came up. The only numbers that kept getting rolled were 9 and 5, both of which were Sally's, so Sally basically dominated the entire game. I couldn't do much the whole time because I didn't have very many supplies. Though admittedly she played a really nice power move where she monopolized like 20 or so sheep, for which she had a 2:1 trading port, so she ended up winning. I just wish that I could have played a little more, so I was pretty annoyed. Erica was watching SYTYCD during this time, since we could only have four people play.

After the game we walked to Davis Square and sat down for food at this place coincidentally called Mike's. It was actually decent, for a fast-food like diner, though I was having some issues because I had a really sore throat and had to keep drinking water. At first I was still rather peeved from being tired and hungry and bored during the game, but then we started to play 20 questions, which was really fun. We started with Erica using "the equator," which took us forever and we didn't get. Then we got into more concrete things, like me "Scrooge McDuck" and Sally "the flower ring from Sex and the City," but the best was when we started getting into Harry Potter 20 questions. We transitioned into this when Jaime used "the shards of Narsil," which was funny because somehow Erica got to asking "Is this from either Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter" and Jaime said yes. Harry Potter was great, we had "Moaning Myrtle," "gillyweed," "the little versions of the dragons in the triwizard tournament from the movie"... We played it into the subway, and Sally and Jaime got off right when I was doing "the prefect's bathroom." Erica and I kept playing, and she did "tea leaves" (which I actually got, but I asked her if you could hold it in your hand, and I was thinking of tea leaves in water, and she said yes, so I started thinking in another direction), "Victor Krum's broken nose," and "Rita Skeeter's pen," while I had "the binoculars from the Quidditch world cup," "Ron's dress robes," and maybe some others that I can't remember.

6/9 (Monday)
No tomatoes

I had an appointment at MIT Medical on Monday morning, so I went there and then stopped at Subway afterwards. Erica wanted a veggie delite sub, but she only wanted tomato, onion, and cheese in it. I thought the veggie delight would have something like sauteed peppers or something, but turns out it is just the sub that everyone else would get, i.e. the condiments like lettuce tomato onion etc., except without the meat. I ordered her stuff, got to the stuff to put in, and found out there were no tomatoes. I thought it was ridiculous to pay five dollars for bread, cheese, and onion, so I turned the sub into a grilled chicken sub for myself. The reason there were no tomatoes was because there is some tomato salmonella scare spreading around the country on raw tomatoes of certain breeds, so they're no longer carrying tomatoes at Subway. WEAK!

MIT Museum

So I convinced Erica to bike with me while I rollerbladed to the MIT Museum, though she was scared at first that she hadn't done it in a while. But she got the hang of it, and we biked on the bike path along the river, so it was pretty lovely. When we got there we stopped at the Korean store to get some drinks, and I got oolong tea and some Helly Kitty pocky-like sticks, which were really tasty. We met Sally at the museum, which was nice because they had lockers that only cost a returnable 25 cent deposit, so I could lock up my rollerblades.

We played around on this oceaneering video game robot thing that people use to practice for the real machines, but even though I was able to grab what I was supposed to, I couldn't life it up because I think one button was broken. There were these cool shrunken styrafoam cups that the ocean engineers bring on deep sea trips as souvenirs and testaments to the pressure changes. I also spent a while looking at the zebrafish exhibit, thinking of the 7.02 days, and then the Smart City city cars, which were kind of like what I was trying to tell Daniel before about how it would be cool to have cars that were just these one person cars that are really small but drive like normal cars. The city cars are different, they stack onto each other, pretty cool. There was also a cool exhibit with some sort of color heat sensor thing that maintained your shadow on this thing full of white beads, hard to explain but very cool.

Upstairs I lost track of Erica and Sally because I spent a really long time reading about the AI lab, thinking, "Hey wait, I went to MIT... This stuff is familiar..." They had a lot of other cool stuff too, like this whole thing of holograms, which were crazy. Some were kind of creepy, like giant Keith Haring's head popping out at you. Surely the future of 3D movies should be in something to do with holograms, because at least they don't make you dizzy. There were also all these cool mechanical art contraptions that moved around and stuff. Also, strobe work by Edgerton, made me so jealous of Mike getting to take strobe lab, I wish I would have done that. Then there was a room with stuff about MIT, like hacks and athena and stuff like that. It's really so weird, I never think about all that stuff being special because I've been here this whole time, but then seeing a whole museum exhibit about it, I remember that MIT is a prestigious university that has made amazing discoveries in science and technology and has this unique culture that people all over the world aspire to be a part of. How weird.

Conner 3

After the museum, Erica and I went to visit Conner 3. We first stopped at Thailand Cafe and got some scallion pancakes and Tom Yum soup, which were very yummy and we ate in the 23 lounge. First thing we did on C3 was look at the new floor boards that Amanda made. I must say, she did a very nice job. I really liked the one from our sophomore year, since I sent her a lot of my pictures that I had gathered when I was supposed to make that floorboard, so it felt like there was a lot of our presence on that board. It was disappointing that we weren't on the other boards so much, so I regret not sending her more pictures for the other two years.

Then we sat down and watched Mike Berry play Grand Theft Auto for like three hours. It was actually pretty fun, and then Spike came in and just ran around stealing lots of cars until he got into the airport and stole a helicopter and beat the 6 stars for over 5 minutes challenge. After that it was a little bit boring, because the story that Berry was building up got interrupted, and the high of the 6 star thing made everything else very dull in comparison. It was kind of fun being on C3 again for a little while, though I know if I was living there, I would have only stayed watching the video game for like five minutes because it's kind of a waste of time if you're not playing yourself. Regardless, I'm glad to have stopped in for a little while, since I haven't really been much all year.

Asgard

Finally Erica and I met Sally at the Asgard for dinner. We sat outside, and the weather was nice and cool. I just got a salad, but it was definitely enough, I wasn't feeling hungry, probably from eating the scallion pancakes and also because of the heat. We played 20 questions again, Erica starting with "her tomato sandwich." I also tried to do "holograms," but that one was really difficult because I couldn't really answer the questions properly. It was fun, and then we finally said bye to Sally and headed home in the almost darkness. At home I just stayed on the computer a lot while Erica watched TV and we eventually went to sleep.

6/10 (Tuesday)

Andriy's birthday

Erica left around noon, so I got to get some work done on Tuesday. Then, since it was Andriy's birthday, we had dinner at the Thai place Pepper Sky on Pearl St. Afterwards we biked to MIT, since Armin's was supposed to be in Burton Conner, and since we were early, we stood around by the river enjoying the evening breeze, it was very romantic. Andriy left, and I went to class, and Burton Conner was like 100 degrees, so we all headed to building 34 as a group, which was kind of fun like a field trip. Class was fun too, Armin taught some crazy routine, and it was fun to dance cuz I was wearing a dress. Finally I went to Andriy's place, and we got a cheap Zipcar after midnight and went to my place to pick up the ice cream maker that I bought him off Amazon that just arrived that day. I should have just gotten it shipped to him, but that's okay because then I was able to wrap it and put glitter glue on it. I tried making ice cream, but the bowl wasn't frozen enough, and it sort of failed, so I'll have to try again.

6/14 (Saturday)

Massive Birthday Dinner and Karaoke

On Saturday we had this massive June birthday dinner for Andriy, Daniyar, Theresa, Ole, and Josie. We headed to this Russian restaurant Stoli at around 6:30pm, and we had to take the T because Andriy's bike was busted. Turns out that was a good idea though because we got driven around the rest of the night, and it would have been harder to bike to those places. We saw Yan and Arthur there, and I think they're dating now, which was the most random thing EVER. It took a while for everyone to show up at the restaurant, but eventually we ended up with 20 ballroom people at one huge table. The place was kind of expensive, and we still ordered a lot of food. Not necessarily a lot of food quantity-wise that we couldn't finish (on the contrary, we finished every single thing), but it was a lot of dishes, enough that we racked up $767 and had to pay $41 each. But the food was very tasty, and we were sitting there for about three hours eating, and it was fun conversation. Dishes: amazing avocado and tomato tower thing, eggplant and stuff thing, marinated raw herring with onions, dumplings, things that looked like pierogies, individual borscht for everyone, lamb chop amazing delicious thing (entree), beef stoganoff (entree), roasted chicken (entree), tilapia stuff in fried crust in the shape of a cartoon fish with an olive for an eye (entree), and amazing desserts of apple strudel, chocolate cake, chocolate stuffed blintzes, fruit blintz, ice cream, and cherry, variniki. And we just kept ordering stuff, so it was very tasty. The owner was also funny and kept coming out to chat and joke.

Then nine of us (the two Jeffs, Josie, Ole, Jing Li, Willa, Greg, Andriy, and I) went to Do Re Mi for some karaoke. It was fun, and we actually got through all our songs in about three and a half hours. I sang American Girls (Counting Crows, which was so not as cool without the harmony), Hurts So Good (John Mellencamp), Les Poissons, Say You'll Be There (Spice Girls), Give It To Me (Timbaland, Nelly Furtado), American Pie (Don McLean), Hey There Delilah (Plain White T's), Save A LIfe (The Fray) amongst other songs. One highlight was Jeff McCollum singing the Timbaland song Ayo Technology and Promiscuous Girl. It's so funny when he sings these pimp songs, I think we all just have to laugh really really hard. Another awesome song was Jeff Wei ending with Semi-Charmed LIfe. Dude, I didn't know that song talked about doing crystal meth. But, nonetheless, it was so awesome to have everyone join in on that song, so classic, and it's funny how we all know the parts that kind of shout out, and just amazing throwback to the late nineties. Fun fun times doing karaoke, I love it.

So I saw like three other people with the same exact crack on their macbooks, to the right of the touchpad. So I went to the Apple store at the Galeria today and asked them if they could fix it under warranty. The guy was like, no problem, so I left my computer there for an hour and a half, went shopping, came back, and now I have basically a whole new case (on the inside, aka keyboard to screen area, not the outside). New touchpad, new keys, everything, so it feels all nice and new, not worn down to the sticky plastic like before. They even wiped my screen clean. NICE. I love making use of warranty. This is what I used to abuse with Dell, though I haven't had to do it with the Mac, but I was like, why not try... Worth it.

So Bob Langer just won the MIllenium Technology Prize. Normally I would be just like "cool," but whenever I hear any news of Bob Langer I cringe just a little. Why? Because I was *this* close to working in Langer lab, but administrative stuff got in the way. And every time I hear the words Bob Langer I think of all the mistakes that I made in my life getting to this point. Am I happy on this path, where I'm headed? Not sure.

I just wish that someone would have told me everything that I know now when I was a freshman. Start getting a UROP early, get into something and do it full out and love it. Maybe if I would have worked someplace like Langer lab from the very first year, then I could've loved biology and loved what I was doing. I think that thing that turned me off was the fact that I just got so frustrated with working conditions and lack of positive results. Or if someone would have told me to try different things and dig deeper, maybe I would have left biology alone and honed in my focus on CS and be making a lot of money now like my classmates who were all good at programming. Instead I basically flailed around for four years and now I feel like I'm just running out of time. The longer I don't know things, the bigger of a loser I seem, and the more embarrassed I am to ask.

I looked at the emails from when I was still looking for an MEng project, and even though its been over a year, it's still crushing every time. I could feel my anxiety and disappointment in every one of those emails, it was like I was reading them for the first time. I mean, I know we should have the skills to go find those things ourselves, but I think that there should be a better system for getting everyone where they need to be, for those of us who just weren't good at it.

I guess I just got unlucky, I never ended up in the kind of environment that I needed to be in. Maybe I should've been more insistent when I was looking for a project, been more enthusiastic, I don't know. I sometimes just get into these ruts where I get depressed about everything that I've done and wish wish wish to go back in time and change it all. I needed better mentorship, I just didn't know. Now I'm in a bad mood, and I need something to pick me back up again, to feel good about what I'm doing, to feel like my future is brighter and I know where I'm heading, and somehow all the pieces will fit back together like a puzzle someday.

It's sad that I can't remember much in between March and May, though I'm not sure that much happened anyway. A large chunk of that time was taken up by ballroom (Harvard/MIT comps) and dance troupe, so that's what was up with me. Dance, that requires a whole entry of its own.

4/5 (Saturday)
Settlers of Catan party

Mike had another one of his board game parties, which are so much fun. We first had a potluck dinner, where I brought (and then made) some salad, Sally brought tofu, Jaime brought cake, and Mike/Yeunhee made these yummy meat wrapped in chicken things covered in cheese. We had a lovely dinner, and then we sat down to play this Settlers of Catan game. I had heard of it before but never played, it was very interesting. Actually, on first glance it would seem like a dull game because the board is not very complicated, but it's actually quite fun.

Mike/Yeunhee won eventually because of something really dumb. Mike was so smugly declaring his win because he got a road longer than Sally's. However, Jaime pointed out that just the turn before I put down one more road and actually claimed the longest road, and that was longer than Mike's. Brilliant. But then, next turn I got too excited being able to buy a new settlement, I forgot to reinforce my road. I could have easily connected two parts for a really long nearly unbeatable for a while road, but Jaime didn't remind me and I forgot, and Mike was able to grow his road one more step to win. So sad. It was fun though, I really love board games.

5/19 (Monday)
Chronicles of Narnia

After my 6.839 final, I had a day before having to deal with the 042 final. So Andriy and I went to watch Chronicles of Narnia at Fenway. It was good, much better than the first one, and Prince Caspian was hot. I just reread the books last year when the first movie had come out, but I already don't remember what happened. I just can't wait for Dawn Treader because that was my favorite. It was also the favorite of the guy who plays Prince Caspian =P.

5/25 (Sunday)
Picnic
Shopping

Sunday we finally pulled off the picnic that we've been planning for a few weeks now, after weeks of rainy Sunday weather. I got bread, cold cuts, and chips from shaws for chip sandwiches, and also ingredients for a yummy salad. Jaime brought cantaloupe, Lev helped get juice, and Sally came late with some pasta salad. We sat down by the dock on the esplanade behind our house and ate and chatted while Jaime took lots of pictures. It's really nice now that I've realized there's this area behind my place, a few weeks ago I went and lay in the grass while grading psets in my bathing suit.

After eating, we put the plates and cups back inside and went back out to the exercise area, where we played around on the pullup bars and stuff like that. I almost did a pullup, which was an accomplishment because I've only done one pullup in my life, and that was in fourth grade. But my arms were really sore yesterday afterwards. Then I tried hanging upside down on the bars while Andriy called me a monkey. I also limbo-ed under the lower bars. I want to be able to go really far down on leg power only, not bending, like a bboy. Someday. Sally and Jaime threw a frisbee around for a little while, until they got geese poop on it, and then we played a few rounds of Chinese poker before Sally had to leave.

Andriy and I went to the Galleria soon afterwards to buy him some pants. I thought we should go to Express because they've got some sexy men stuff, and we saw Milan there, and I thought, of course, Milan has some nice style. Unfortunately, the pants didn't really fit Andriy and made his butt look two feet long, so we ended up going to the Gap, which was better. Then we went to Target on the way home to get some things like soap, and then we had dinner at some Korean place on the way back. We were really late for the last FADS runthroughs ever, but they were fun nonetheless. More on that later.

Die Hard 1-3

Andriy and I watched the three Die Hard movies on his projector. They were actually pretty good, I think I'm a fan now. And I can't believe that the water jug thing was a real puzzle - we talk about it to model state machines in 042, but I never thought it was for real. I think I like the second one best, though, with the planes.

TV!

So, lots of TV going on that is really good. But the most important of all is that somehow I got into rewatching some Duck Tales, and I must say, it's just as good as ever, I haven't outgrown it at all. Awesome. And even though foreign people don't have the same experiences in popular media, Andriy said everyone his age also watched Duck Tales back in the day, so we were able to watch it together. Also, TaleSpin, Chip N Dale, Darkwing Duck, etc.

Other TV that I've been watching...

Celebracadabra - great because I love love love Hal Sparks. Plus the magic was pretty cool, though I wish they'd show how they did some of the tricks.

Viva Hollywood - even though it's like the dumbest show ever and the acting is really bad. I need to practice my spanish cuz I'm going to Costa Rica!

Step It Up And Dance - I enjoy it but they have no online episodes, which I think is the dumbest thing a show could do.

Dancing with the Stars - I was rooting for Jason Taylor, but I was happy that Kristi won because she really did kill on the finale. Jason has such good posture though, I was really impressed with his standard.

Desperate Housewives - What is going on with the 5 years later? What happened to Mike? I really liked the finale though, it was good to see Cathy was actually not a bad person.

Ugly Betty - omg just get with Gio already. Seriously, Henry is so last year.

Grey's Anatomy - Actually, this was one of the best season finales I've seen. The tumor patient love was just so touching, and the guy who was LJ on Prison Break is so hot. And then finally Meredith comes to terms with her annoying baggage.

Lost - WTF is going on? I'm curious to see how this all pans out in the season finale because it honestly is making no sense.

So You Think You Can Dance - FINALLY this is back! I almost didn't know, and then I downloaded the first episode via bittorrent, and I remembered the brilliance of having the high quality avi file. Some really nice dancing, loved the poppers like Phillip Chbeeb and the crazy contortionist guy. And the guy with the dance to the poetry reading, that was hot. Yay I'm so excited, I think this marked the beginning of summer for me, because I haven't gotten into summer mode quite yet.

Lawrence stuff

So we're still going to Lawrence to deal with the high schoolers, even though it's been a total flop. It really didn't work the way we did it, making up stuff as we went along, not really sticking to the overall plan of dealing with simulations. It was just pretty disorganized, so I still don't feel like they know what they are doing at all, and that's bad. I pulled an all-nighter last week to put something together for the first time (since Daniel usually does it), but we didn't use it because I didn't think it was ready. I'm going to have to revise it for this week to get it working, so hopefully that works out.

What has been cool, though, is getting to know my coworkers better. I mean, Daniel was always really friendly, but it was fun to talk to him and whoever else about things like Disney and Narnia and stuff like that. The only sad thing was that my room guy came for one session and he is so annoying, he just always says things where I think to myself, "What on earth can I possibly say to that?" Anyway, I'll just be glad when this stuff is over though, it puts a lot of pressure, since you're interacting, so you have to get it right. Yuck.

*************************

Next to come: Dancing-related stuff.

Spring Break:

Even though it wasn't much of a spring break, since I was mostly working on my 839 project, there were a few things of note. Lev and co. wanted to go road-tripping to Florida, but unfortunately that didn't pan out, and I couldn't because I was working on the project. The worst was seeing pictures that other people posted from their trips to sunny tropical places. Sad.

3/21 (Friday)
Boston Market and 10,000 BC

Andriy and I went to Boston Market and had delicious delicious delicious chicken and mashed potatoes and creamed spinach and mac and cheese. I love Boston Market, I wish I'd go more often... Then we met Jaime and Sally for 10,000 B.C. at Boston Commons. That movie was basically Apocalypto, but set in a different time. Not really sure what the time was, even though it said 10,000 B.C., it seemed there were pyramids there too, which I'm not sure is correct. It was still fun to watch though, and the guy was hot. Turns out he's the same guy from The Covenant, which incidentally played Warren Peace in Sky High, which was awesome.

3/22 (Saturday)
Non-Spring-Break Party

There was Larinda's, and afterwards Lev and I went shopping with car. We went to the liquor store and then to shaws and bought lots of alcohol and food in prep for PARTY that night (aka sad compensation for those of us staying behind during spring break). The party started off with some of Lev's friends, and we watched Pixar shorts on youtube for a little while. Then more people started showing up, and drinking, and well, it's all documented via Jaime's awesome take a zillion shots in continuous shutter mode policy. The pictures got interesting as the night went on and people started to leave and somehow we ended up with a bunch of pictures of Lev's bald spot and one of his crotch. Thanks Jaime. Jaime basically dominated the rest of the night with nonsensical drunk talk, especially after Sally left in disgust after his flirted with this other little Asian girl for a really long time. Yeah it was an interesting time...

3/23 (Sunday)
Arethusa Falls

I wanted to write about this when it happened, but it was pretty overwhelming. Andriy and I decided to take a day to do something vacation-y, so we rented a car and drove up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to go hiking for the day. This could have very easily turned into one of those TV shows about a hiking trip gone terribly wrong, and we were really lucky that nothing happened in the end and we made it out safe and sound. It's weird because you never really think about your own mortality until something like this happens. I think this is probably the third time that I've really been scared that I or someone close to me might die - after the river in Munich and the deep pit on the beach in Miami with Erica.

So we got a late start going because we were tired from the party the night before, and we didn't leave until noon. It took about three hours to drive up there, and then it was a little confusing when we got to the final road because most of the trail signs were buried in snow, so we eventually had to ask some ski rental place where the trail was. We wanted to take the trail to Arethusa Falls, which is apparently the highest drop in NH with some other associated superlatives... The trail is supposed to go past a really nice scenic viewpoint that gives a spectacular view of Mt. Washington.

So even though it was March, the snow up there was deep as ever, which I hadn't anticipated when I wore my sneakers that had a hole in the side. Luckily I also wore wool socks and consequently didn't feel any wetness until a couple of hours in the snow. The trail was a little slippery with snow while going downhill, but overall it was very calming just trekking through the wilderness in the glistening snow and taking lots of pictures. I was lucky that I brought along my snow pants because I used them quite a few times as a shortcut going downhill. They were also useful when I plopped down on the ground to take some pictures of leaves.

Since we didn't start the hike until around 4pm, we didn't get to the falls until around 5:30. They were really cool looking because almost the whole thing was frozen minus a small window near the bottom, and it was just this huge mass of dripping ice covering a huge cliff drop. It was like a winter wonderland, especially with the path over a small snowy bridge that led up to it. Very romantic.

Here's where things went wrong. We thought, okay we have about an hour and a half until sunset. Since we'd already gone the path of the falls, why not move forward, since it loops around to the road anyway. It would take a little longer, but we should be fine if we walk fast. The beginning of the way forward was a fairly easy hike, so we were really happy that we went that way, rather than going back along what I thought might be tricky, since I had thought it was slippery on the way in. Walk walk walk, all is well and good, and then we come to more signs saying how the road is still two miles off. It seemed strange that it was taking so long, but we were still confident. Then the sun starts to set.

We started walking a little faster, and we got to the peak with the scenic view of Mt. Washington right about sunset. That was really beautiful, but I was unfortunately starting to get a little cold. We had our beef jerky and water though, so I still felt okay, that I could survive. We kept walking hoping to get to the road soon. It got darker and darker and still nothing. Then we came to a sign, and there was nothing about the road on that sign. It was horrible, I don't understand how they could lead you along this trail and then suddenly drop you off. At this point I was starting to get a little scared because we still didn't know what was ahead, and it was getting really dark. The path was slippery with snow, and there were quite a few portions of the way where it was downhill along the side of the mountain on a narrow road with no railing of any kind. In the dark, this becomes very scary. I had to sit down quite a few times to move on my butt because I was terrified of falling off the mountain.

In times of need, who would have thought that my iPod could save my life. Out of everything that I had with me - I almost left it in the car too - the iPod had a 10 hour battery and a surprisingly amazingly bright light that was able to light our path very well. Andriy was smart too, told me to stop playing music to save battery, so I kept it on the info menu so that I could easily renew the light by pressing play, but nothing would actually play that way. That was one comfort in all of that. Finally we got to this point where it was basically impossible to keep going down. I really just don't know how that would have worked, it would have been a sheer climb down the mountain grabbing onto whatever tree there was along the way. Andriy maneuvered a tiny way down, and all I could think about in that moment was what if he falls down the mountain, what am I going to do here in the middle of the woods alone in the middle of a snowy night and he gets hurt or worse dies. I was freaking out and finally got him to pull back, and we clung to that one tree for a few minutes in despair trying to figure out what to do. I looked up that area when we got home, turns out it's called Frankenstein Cliffs, and apparently that part of the trail you have to climb a root path down, which I think there's probably no way to do in the snow, even during the day. I don't understand how they can have this stuff and not warn people along the way, it's crazy dangerous.

We did the only thing we could do at this point, we turned back. Well, we were still convinced that we were close to the road, so we pulled back to the overlook of Mt. Washington, and at that point we took a break to regroup. I knew it would be a while to walk back the way we came, and I was starting to get scared for bears or something like that, especially because we had beef jerky. Since we were up high, we were able to get some phone service, and I called Mike. Mike helped us get some park service numbers, but of course they were closed at that time, and I just didn't know what to do. God bless Mike for helping out, even if nothing came of it. It was nice to talk to someone that we knew, knowing that if anything happened, at least he knew where we had been. The only other option was to call 911, and we decided against it. God knows the only thing I wanted in that moment was for a helicopter to fly in and rescue us, but I knew that we still had one other option to turn back, and we knew that way. Even though I was freezing and my feet were starting to get wet, at least we had some food and water and each other and my iPod, so we were doing okay. Andriy gave me his jacket, since apparently he was hot, and that really helped.

Everything became much brighter after we decided to turn back, because we knew exactly where we were going now. Even though I had a silent fear of bears or some crazy serial killer following us, neither of us spoke of anything like that for fear of freaking each other out, and we both knew that it was the only thing that we could do to keep sane and productive was to keep our mouth chattering about something trivial and optimistic. We just talked about things like dance and what we were going to do when we got home. Plus I knew deep down also that if we kept talking loudly it would ward off bears anyway.

Surprisingly, going back the way we came was quite easy. The trail was light and not as steep or slippery as I would have thought. I think my expectation of a steep hill was changed over the course of the trip, so it wasn't so scary at all. We got back in an hour or two, I believe, which is amazing because it seemed much longer on the way in, especially after having gone all that extra distance. It was SUCH a relief to be back in the car, driving away. I was still scared of a killer, but once we were out onto the highway I could finally relax. It was around midnight when we finally got back on the road. It was a stupid thing that we did, especially having no flashlights or anything so late in the day, and we were lucky that nothing happened.

Other than having an interesting story to tell, one thing that was good about what came out of the experience was a shared bond with Andriy that only a real scary trial can give you. I was really afraid, but through everything it was comforting to know that we were together and we could carry each other through it.

Um yeah, let's see how this goes now, two months later. Classes are over now, so I finally have some time to write some stuff, though I really don't feel like doing it because this is going to be an annoying task for sure, I'm splitting up entries in rough groups, so they won't be too long.

Classes:

-6.839

So this class got a little bit ridiculous because only four of us ever showed up at any given time, mostly me, Jordan, Alan, and Tiffany. It was awkward, towards the end of the course we started discussing articles rather than having lectures, and there was one time I came in 30 minutes late, and hot professor was like, "So who wants to cancel class, given there are so few people here?" I wanted to leave, and I think we all kind of did, but at the same time I was like, ok I just got here, might as well stay... Finally Alan spoke up and we ended up sticking around and talking about the Teddy software. But all of those paper discussion classes were just us watching the videos and conference recordings off the people's websites, hot professor was getting kind of lazy I think. Which is totally okay because it was fun to watch that stuff anyway.

Since I last wrote, we had two more regular projects and one final project. The very first project that we had, the ray tracer, was fairly straightforward, so I thought everything would proceed like 837. No such luck. The next projects got hard, real fast.

-I basically spent all of spring break working on the second project, since I had put off dealing with it. The biggest challenge was reading the notes and figuring out just what the hell was going on with the math in this class. The second project had to do with physically based modeling, and we had to implement constraint forces and rigid bodies. I spent so long figuring stuff out that I never got the constraints to work after a NaN error, but I did get rigid bodies going in 3D. Turns out we only had to do them in 2D, so I got a little extra credit for that, even though I got credit off for not getting constraints working. I was even lucky at that, because it wasn't until morning of that I actually got the rigid bodies to stop spazzing out (stupid quaternion conversions). So I had gone into class and volunteered to go first because I was depressed and sure my presentation would be the worst. Luckily hot professor wasn't there, it was just Eugene, so that made me feel better. But really I felt so much better after the class ended because basically nobody else finished the project. People got various things going, from constraints to rigid bodies in 2D, but nobody got everything. Since it was customary to finish everything in 837, I got really stressed, but after seeing the lower standards in 839, I was very relieved that I wasn't much further behind everyone else.

It was also cool because we all now had this shared bonding experience because I think we were all in the same stressed situation. We were all chatting about all of our frustrations with the project, and Alan was like, "At least I finally understand Jacobians," and I couldn't have agreed more. Even though it was all very annoying, I admittedly did learn a lot of stuff, especially about math...

-Third project wasn't so bad, we were doing inverse kinematics. I never got mine working in 3D, but I was now under the more relaxed, do-as-much-as-you-can attitude, so it was much less stressful. Indeed, not so many people got everything working, though some did. At least the 2D worked, and that was pretty cool.

-Final project was severely stalled because I had dance troupe that same week and was therefore quite busy. I decided to do subdivision, because I didn't feel like going back and dealing with the previous projects and all their shortcomings. Subdivision was a pretty easy concept but it was a lot of bookkeeping and attempts at optimization. I was pretty happy with my subdivision program, but I just regret that I didn't have time to get it to add/delete new points. I might still tackle that later. I also would like to have had texture mapping of some sort. Also, as pointed out by the professor, my shading might have been off.

I was supposed to give my presentation last on Tuesday, but because a) hot professor spent so long on the first presentation asking Jay to change things in his code on the spot, and b) kenny showed up late and gave his presentation but tried to render on the spot, which was really dumb, I had to be postponed until Thursday. While that would have been nice to have extra time to finish my work, I was really counting on just being done on Tuesday and focusing my energy on my 6.865 project, which was also due Thursday. Having the two extra days gave me pressure, like I had to improve my project somehow, and that was annoying. I ended up just going with the disclaimer that I didn't have time to do anything else. I think I still had some cool features, so I tried to play those up instead.

-Final exam. It was on Monday morning at 9am, so I spent Sunday evening studying, putting together notes on all of my projects, since we were allowed to bring anything handwritten. It was lucky that I always write out detailed plans and mathematical derivations every time I did a project, so I was ahead of the game on that. The exam itself was three questions, one on each project asking for the mathematical derivation of some aspect of the project. The first one on ray tracing was easy, since I knew exactly how to do the derivation for sampling the spherical light (I even wrote notes because I suspected that would be asked). Second question dealt with a rigid body with a nail constraint, and the third was the inverse kinematics on a rigid body. I never went so detailed into rigid bodies other than just moving them, so I had no idea what to do. I ended up just doing my best with a guess at a possible approach. I'm not sure if that was right or wrong, but I got a 91 on the final, so I guess it was not bad.

I was really happy when I was done with the final, I was holding office hours later that day (though only one person came), so I went to the Galleria and bought a book on Costa Rica (I'm going btw, more on that later). While I was there I ran into Kenny and Sharat, who I guess also wanted to unwind after the final. I wonder how that kid Sharat did in the class, because he even missed the final presentation because he was late and the professor needed to catch a plane. He was always really bad at all his projects, so I'm curious. But I'm happy with my grade. I think it paid off to go to all the classes and maintain a presence and show that I was interested. If we were grading on a flat 90-A scale, I would have been borderline, but I think that likely the cutoff was lower based on everyone else's performance. Anyway, turns out I can rock grad school better than undergrad, woohoo!

-6.865

I started deteriorating in this class. I still loved going to it, but I would always get sleepy halfway through (it was during normal siesta hours!) and zone out (you know when it actual becomes painful to try to force your eyes open?). I did enjoy some of the guest lecturers (Shai Avidan with seam carving, this other guy with the amplification of tiny movements, etc.), and I really liked being able to follow along and ask questions. I wish I was like that in all classes, and it really makes me realize that I like this stuff better than biology, because I never wanted to ask questions in any of my bio classes. The projects were great, and I got perfect scores on all of them, and I got to do cool things like the Jaime-Ling face warp sequence and panorama stitching... Then came the final project.

I did so badly on that final project. I'm so mad at myself, because I really liked making a good impression on Fredo. I chose a project that was hard to begin with, exacerbated by the fact that I really do not understand math and don't know anything about deconvolution. The thing was, I loved doing the projects in class because we took a concept from a paper and implemented it. Then he asked people in class for their topics of choice, and it seemed like everyone wanted to do some sort of fancy take-a-paper-and-extend-it sort of thing, where I didn't feel like I was at a point yet to be creative with that. So I thought I had to be doing actual research of some type, so I decided to look at removing blur caused by camera shake. Turns out that's really hard and the algorithm that I was looking at even Fredo didn't understand fully. Unfortunately, he didn't get back to me on my proposal until two weeks later, so I didn't know this opinion until late in the game. I wanted to do something else a little bit more fun, but I somehow got trapped in doing this, and I did the thing that I always do by waiting until it's too late to ask or turn back because I'm too embarrassed that I've waited so long. To top it off, I had no time to work on it because I knew I had to do well in my 839 project, since I was doing worse in that class. I was lucky to have gotten the code used in the paper to play around with, which allowed me some basis for working, otherwise I would have truly been in despair. I utterly failed, but was lucky enough to have gotten a 7/10 from Fredo and therefore maintained an A- in the class (too bad, could have been an A otherwise). Looked from the 2 minute class presentations that the range of success from people in the class went from around my level to really cool success, so I didn't feel that bad about it afterwards. I think I would like to try some of the other things I was interested in though, if I have time sometime.

-6.042

Glad the class is over, don't have to do any more stupid TA stuff. I don't mind it so much, but it's nice not having to get up three times a week by 9:30 and having to deal with grading and making up miniquizzes. I liked my students and all (brought candy twice too, that was fun), so I'll miss them a little. Oh, interesting thing, one of my students apparently went to the same elementary school as me, Washington school. Apparently he was good childhood friends with Eric Nellis and said that that was one of his biggest childhood inspirations, because Eric Nellis was smart, athletic, and good at video games, and that's why he chose his English name when he changed his Chinese name to Eric. Weird, small world.

Other stuff that I had to do for class, I did the magic trick again, this time as the assistant. It's much more nerve racking being the assistant though, because that's where you've gotta be really slick arranging the cards. It's easy to read them as the magician. I do enjoy doing it though, it's a good time. I also gave a mini-review lecture during the last week when the professor wasn't there. I freaked out last minute when I didn't have the slides, only the pdf, so I called the prof late at night while he was in Cali, which I felt bad about, because turns out the slides were in the restricted directory anyway. The mini lecture went fine, though it was very short and casual. Thank goodness I didn't have to do full lectures like Jay and Jeremy.

Final exam prep was again done primarily by Jay, and I felt bad about that, but that guy is seriously just such a good TA, and I didn't really have any time so god bless him. Then we gave the final exam, and I went to LaVerde's to get my first ever breakfast sandwich, and I saw one of my students in there scribbling stuff on his cheat sheet. I thought that was kind of dumb, since you'd probably get more out of the hour in the exam that you just wasted, but I guess that was his choice.

Grading the exams took again around 9 hours, which is ridiculous. Last term I only graded like one question because there were a ton of exams and that one question took so long that I got totally burned out. This time I flew through the questions, I graded like five of them and just zipped right through, that was fun, made me feel productive. We also ordered this really spicy chinese food from some place that I guess was Szechuan, and Prof Meyer told us some story about how when he first dated his wife he was impressed by how well she kept up with spicy food. He also said she used to hate him because he was on her thesis oral panel or whatever and gave her a lot of shit because he didn't like the project that her supervisor gave. It's weird to think of him ever being young, he's just so old... That food was really spicy. Really really spicy...

Grades meeting was only 3 hours this time, thank goodness. Jay had a cool projected trends in miniquizzes and hw over the semester for every student, so that was helpful. The boundaries were also pretty self defining this time, which helped. I was happy almost all of my students did pretty well, so I got a good bunch this time.

That's that for that class. I'll probably have to TA again next semester, but hopefully Jay will be there still, forever one-up-ing me in TA semesters so that I never have to take on the head TA role, ever. =P

vh1 40 hottest hotties of the 90s, jailbait special blurb, whoever said this about Hanson is amazing:

"The three of them together was like a basket of puppies."

The rest of these commentaries are hilarious as well. Like about Fabio. oh yeaaah.

These are things not related to dancing. Dancing will come in the next entry.

Classes:

-6.042 is going okay, there's not as much work as last semester because I don't have to read the lecture notes anymore. Plus, it's less stressful because the problem solving just comes at the end of lecture, so everyone's working at the same time and Prof Meyer comes around and asks them questions too, so I really only have to be a helper. It's just grading that is a pain in the ass. I spent like four days of grading sessions this past week because I got behind on my pset grading, and I was stuck on one with all these induction proofs where everyone had these whack proofs that made no sense and took forever to decipher. I also thought I lost someone's pset today but it turns out he took it home again by mistake. Thank goodness.

-I finally learned how to use LaTeX. Actually, it was pretty easy, I learned it in a matter of minutes reading some background information. I still have to look up a lot of commands, but I was able to put together a pset and also do my 6.865 project writeups. It's very cool.

-Staff meetings are in the faculty dining room, and the food is all-you-can-eat for $9. This is expensive, and I don't really like paying it, but it was comforting that the professor paid for it twice. The food is pretty good, but I always get too much and end up stuffed, which is slightly uncomfortable afterwards.

-I've basically stopped working on my thesis, which is bad, but I've gotten sort of overwhelmed with projects for both graphics and comp photography. Now that they both have projects, the due dates overlap and they are never easy enough to knock off in one day. I actually missed one Tuesday of classes, which I hated doing, because I was finishing a comp photography pset. But the projects are cool, and you get to do cool things post processing photos, so I don't mind. It's like building your own version of photoshop out of matlab.

-Graphics we finished our Monte Carlo ray tracer. It was cool because there were soft shadow lights and depth of field focusing effects, but I felt kind of lame that I didn't have time to implement any other cool things like other students did. We had to present in class, and it was cool to see what everyone else was able to do.

-I did go to Lawrence one more time so that we could discuss our proposal plans with Rebecca. Daniel drove me, and we got Coffee Coolatas on the way, so that was cool. Though he said that Ricarose's brother just died in an accident, and that was really sad. I know I'm unproductive when I don't have classes, but now I wish that classes would go away so that I can at least pretend I'm going to focus.

Fun:

-(2/10) Muyi's birthday dinner before Armin's.

Muyi is 30! Geez, after I found that out I went on facebook and looked up all these people I know, and it turns out a ton of people are 26+. I mean, Jay my fellow TA is 29. WTF. Now I'm really starting to feel old that all my friends are almost 30. It reminds me how young I am, because seriously, 7 years is a long time, you experience a whole life in that time. Anyway, Muyi's dinner was at Penang, and there were people from his lab and then a couple of ballroom people, though not that many, and there was some ballroom discussion about how all the good open MIT couples are the ones who have left Armin, and this was coming from Donny and Dayna and Tuan, and I never knew that there was such dissent about Armin, but I can kind of see it (and I'll get into this later).

-(2/13) First and last yoga class.

I tried it, but the woman teaching it was so bitchy. There were 31 of us, and I had forgotten to go to the first class, and she was being so anal about how many people need to be there, and then she picked on this girl who wasn't doing something because of some hip condition, and she was like, "Oh, if you guys have some problem, just remind me and I'll give you something to do. Otherwise I will just assume you are lazy." I mean, come on, it's a PE, not a class. It doesn't have to be so strict. Anyway, plus sideways things made no sense to me because my hip always got in the way. I would have liked to have kept going, but I got too unmotivated, also because it was late afternoon and I preferred going home.

-(2/13) First and so far last TEP lab lunch meeting.

I met a bunch of people from the TEP lab that I didn't know because they were working on other games, and we had some yummy Indian food to go with discussion of journals that we should keep up with. The whole thing was supposed to be like a journal club. They were all really cool, so I really think that people who end up working on creative things like games really preserve their inner child very well. Unfortunately, the week after I overslept in the Terrascope room, then the week after I was working on my 839 assignment, and then the week after I had 042 grading, so I haven't been since that first one. Now I'm nervous to go back, but I think I'll try again this Wednesday.

-(2/14) VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

So first I went over to Andriy's place where he got me a dozen roses that I proceeded to take lots and lots of picture of. I had also bought Sweethearts and Nerds from CVS, which were tasty. Then Andriy and I went to Mantra, this fancy Indian/French fusion place near Boston Common. That was a mistake, it was sooo expensive. This trumps $8 tomato expensive, and we didn't even have a choice because they had a special Valentine's Day dinner, and you couldn't order anything that wasn't on the Valentine's dinner menu. They did give me a single rose and gave Andriy a cigar, though. There was a nice jazz band playing, and the food was delicious. We were so bad though, we kept taking pictures during dinner, which is sort of lame because it's so unclassy, but it was fun. I had an avocado salad and grilled lamb chops and chocolate creme brulee. The only bad thing was that we had to rush because we needed to go to the ballet afterwards. I was actually stressed out quite a bit getting to Mantra too because we were already running late. I hate being late when it matters.

Unfortunately we got to the ballet 10 minutes late, and they wouldn't seat us until the first act was over. Fortunately we were one of the first people late, so we got to stand/kneel on chairs right up against the window, which wasn't too bad. It was nice to sit after the first act though. So we saw Romeo and Juliet by the Boston Ballet. I have to admit, I thought that was one of the best ballets I've seen. Apparently Jeremy was there too, but I didn't know that until he told me at staff meeting, and he said he didn't really like it. Ratmir and his girlfriend Kiki were also there, and I chatted with them during intermission, and Ratmir was like, "It's as good as a ballet can get, I suppose." But I really loved it. First off, the costumes were amazing. They were so elegant and regal, with all those folds like they had in Shakespearean time, lovely colors and materials. The dancing was unique, I enjoyed the street performers dancing with a lot of tricks. But most importantly was the girl who played Juliet. She was phenomenal. The thing about this ballet was that it was not like Nutcracker, which is a lot of just showing off dancing, but Romeo and Juliet is first and foremost a play and a story, and the acting was really expressive. I think I felt more emotion watching this than watching the actual play, because the play a lot of it is words, and words are words, especially in Shakespearean language, don't necessarily connect all the time. But the way that you could feel every emotion through the bodies of Romeo and Juliet, that was really amazing. Key to that was the choreography. Whoever the choreographer was did a great job, because it really told the story very well. Anyway I loved it.

When we got home we made creme brulee and sat and ate it in candlelight and took some more pictures. It was very romantic and lovely.

-(2/16-17) BU Comp.

I'll save the details on this for my dance entry, but I need to mention something to preface into my dentist appointment. So BU comp was cool because it was right next to my house, so I didn't have to go very far. Also because it's right above Jamba Juice, so I was able to get a Matcha Green Tea Blast. But after the first day of competition, there was two hours before the show, so I went with Wei and Andriy to Brown Sugar. While we were there, I did something stupid, which is that I bit into my fork and chipped my tooth. I don't know, I feel like I've bitten into my fork before with no ill effects, but this time, I knocked a piece right out. It was probably a millimeter square on my front tooth, and I had to keep tonguing it afterwards because it felt so weird. Consequently I had to make a dentist appointment.

-(2/18, 3/03, 3/05) Dentist appointments.

So I went to the dentist a series of times. I found this place really close to my house. Turns out it's awesome. Why? My dentist looks just like Tom Cavanaugh, aka the guy from Ed, aka JD's brother on Scrubs. Except a younger version of him. Like, seriously, so much. And not only that, he talks and acts like him too. When he was filling in my tooth, he let me choose a color that I thought matched my tooth, and he was like, "I think it's A3, but it's up to you. Most of the time I'm pretty good at picking, but then sometimes people are like, 'No, that's way off!'" Then when I was getting my initial checkup he was concerned about my teeth grinding and told me stuff about people with dentures, and then he was like, "I know, I'm just trying to psych you out, but it's true." Imagine Dan Dorian saying that to you, and that JD is just somewhere in another room and will come in at any moment. That's how I felt the entire time I was at the dentist's. He's pretty cute, I'd say he's probably late 20's early 30's. I <3 him. The third time I went was just for cleaning, and I got a woman. That sucked.

-(2/24) Coffee Table.

I finally gave in to Zipcar. I must admit it is kind of awesome, particularly no gas. Andriy rented a big Zipcar, and we drove to Everett to meet this guy from craigslist, and now I have a coffee table. It's just the kind that I wanted too, oak colored, matches my entertainment center, square, right size. I'm very happy. The trip was also fun, it's always nice to get out of Boston however briefly.

-(3/08) Robbie and girlfriend 5 year anniversary.

We didn't really stick around for this, since we had to practice standard for the Harvard Comp the next day, but we did briefly pop our heads in. Robbie and his girlfriend Kendra had a 5 year anniversary party, which I thought was just adorable, and they got some guy who I think was one of their friends from Delaware or something to come an play music. This guy was pretty good, when we were upstairs and heard it, we thought they were playing a recorded CD. But the fact that nobody was talking led me to believe that some guy was actually performing, and that was just really slick. I'm glad that our basement room can be used for something like that, it was really cool.

-(3/14) Simon's birthday party.

Is it possible that I didn't go out the entire time in between? Sad. But when I went to Simon's party I was like forgetting what it was like to be at a party, it had been so long. I brought the Zubrowka bison grass Polish vodka, since I knew of all people Simon would appreciate it. I did kind of hope to drink more of it, but he opened it and a couple of us (including Yue-Hann!) drank some, and then he stored it away for safe keeping. But I'm glad that other people that I didn't know so well didn't get to waste it by making drinks that are not tasty apple juice vodka. It's really a cool drink though, because of the blade of grass inside, it really does taste a little bit grassy, but in a good way, and I was actually able to just drink some of it pure without being overwhelmed. Jaime had his camera, so he took lots and lots of pictures of me, because I was the only who volunteered to pose. A lot. I felt like Jiji, and then I felt sad that I most likely will never know a way to get back in touch with her.

Then I danced a lot until the cake came out and everyone moved into Simon's room and then went home. Those of us that were left, however, finally got to play Nintendo Monopoly. Finally. I was the Link shield, and after not being able to buy anything forever except for Mario Kart, I was finally able to buy Mario (i.e. Boardwalk). Andriy had Luigi, and I finally convinced him to cut a deal where he would give me Luigi, I would buy all hotels, and he would get 50% of the cut. Which is really a good deal for him because I'm paying for everything. But we told people that it was something like a merger, which was misleading and set them off into a panic. After that, Yue-Hann, Christian, Jaime, and Sally made a four-way merger, covering the whole board, and unfortunately Andriy and I had to go right after that, and we got screwed landing on the same spot full of hotels. So we went bankrupt, which was okay because we wanted to go home. Simon and Nora were one person, and they were now up against the four-way merger, but I think the game disintegrated after that point. It was actually incredibly stupid, because the way that we merged we were still our own people. But what they did was basically gave all money and assets to Sally who then because a Sugar Mama. It was fun though.

Assorted Notes:

-I discovered that I washed my passport, twice. This sucked because it's super expensive to get a new one, and I wouldn't have it in time for spring break, so I couldn't go anywhere cool. We contemplated going to Florida again, but I honestly think I'm just too tired for that right now. Lev recruited me into his road trip down to Florida, but we couldn't get enough people, and I was honestly having second thoughts, so I guess for the first time ever I'm just going to stay home and chill during spring break. It's a little bit depressing, but I think I will appreciate not having to finish all of my projects this week even more.

-Lost is getting good. Where did Benjamin Linus get 324 cadavers?! OMG Jin is dead?! Michael?! Yay I'm excited.

-Beauty and the Geek sucks now, the whole charm of the show was getting to see the beauties and geeks interact, and now they barely have time to do that because they have to prepare for challenges alone with their own gender groups. Lame. But I am glad that girl Amber is gone.

-I've been really into the show America's Best Dance Crew. I mean, IT HAS SHANE SPARKS. And the dancing is just fabulous. Jabawockeez and Kaba Modern are just sick, and if you don't know what I'm talking about you'd better youtube them because it's amazing. It's cool because after I saw it, Sam told me about it (citing Shane Sparks and his amazingness), and then Erica sent me links to youtube via facebook wall, and of course I had to then share with Kunal. I love America and I love dance shows and I love that reality shows never went away, even though we made our effigy thing in senior year Spanish a volcano of reality TV shows.

-Incidentally, speaking of Sam, Mike Blaisse emailed us asking us for advice because he is going to be in Bayer this summer. And I emailed him back like a ten paragraph email full of advice. Sam emailed back like ten minutes later with the SAME email. It was in his words and slightly reorganized, but he had all of the same bullet points in almost the same order (BKG, Eurail, Schoeneswochenende, Bundesland, Junior Ticket, fly to other countries, hostel), it was pretty crazy. I had to email him back to tell him that we should start our own agency because we have become the same person, and then he mentioned something about banks, and I replied about having to use ATMs, and then he replied the same thing about having to use ATMs, and I really started to get creeped out. I miss Sam.

Ok I'm still putting off the long entry, but I wanted to mention two more things:

-Justin Long and Drew Barrymore - adorable.

-Chris Follett aka Chris Fallout from sailing is now on Beauty and the Geek. I didn't even know that it was starting up again, but it's awesome to always know someone on the show. He's funny, he's the guy that really reminded me of Jeff from ballroom and was why I used to call Jeff Chris. Totally regeekified like Johnny, though he's probably a bit more geeky than Johnny to begin with. I just wish I could get in touch with Jiji to tell her about it, but she fell off the face of the planet... I'm actually quite concerned about her, but I have no idea what to do.

One thing to note about new BATG: The guy Greg - he tried out for So You Think You Can Dance, in season 1, episode 2. I am so good at being obsessed with SYTYCD that I can remember back that far and after seeing a BATG clip know that that was the same guy. I rock.

It's been an ass long time since I've written. Just a couple of things that I want to mention two things first:

-Brad Renfro is dead. OMG I was shocked to read that in People at the dentist's office today. Huck from Tom and Huck?! This is so sad, I had such a crush on him as a 12 year old, about as much as Mimisiku aka Sam Huntington. It's such a pity, it was heroin overdose.

-Counting Crows. I started listening to them like crazy, and it's gotten me back into listening to my iPod while biking. The music is just so classic small-town America. When I hear it, it takes me back to Tucson, walking the streets, young and without worries, under the Arizona sky. It makes me feel like I'm on a front porch in some small town (Omaha?) just feeling wind in face and hearing crickets chirping. It makes me think I'm driving on a road trip with the windows down. Makes me think of things like Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81 (Ethan Embry movie), Dawson's Creek, etc. It's something about the beautiful melodies, simple instrumentals, and the honesty of Adam Duritz's voice. Amazing. Some of those melodies just melt me inside - "I wish this weather would never leave" (Miami), "When you wake, the morning covers you in light" (Hard Candy), and songs like American Girls, Omaha, etc. They just put me totally at ease.