Sunday, December 23, 2007

A Week at Home

Been home for a week now and it's been great. My brother still had school so I had the mornings and afternoons to myself. Borrowed some books from Berkeley through my cousin and started studying. Sigh... wish I can just read fiction and relax. I haven't seen my cousin for a long and it was fun to talk to her and her mom. She just got done with her finals and her mom was going to pick her up to bring her home so I tagged along to get some books from the engineering library. Her mom told me how she got robbed at gunpoint right outside her house! She works nights so she gets home at around 3am. She said it happened twice this year... So scary.

Anyway, we went to this Mexican place for lunch and got some burritos. Her mom said she had something really good last time and wanted it again. But my cousin couldn't remember what it was so she tried to describe it to the guy "it had chicken and lots of cheese, very hot..." lol. no success. We ended up ordering twice and it turned out that what she had before were enchiladas. The burritos were really good and we ordered a couple more burritos to bring back for her sisters.

That was Tuesday. I spent Wednesday and Thursday plowing through some notes. Didn't get very far but... yeah.... On Friday, I went to visit my high school again. Didn't see many teachers this time since they're teaching. I saw the counselors, dropped off some books for my history teacher, and then went to my calculus teacher's room where I met up with Willy. Haven't seen Willy for 2, 3 years. We talked for a long time and there were some calculus students hanging about as well. Willy walked me to E18 and then went home since I was meeting up with some friends from middle school. I saw Benison the other day and it would be nice to get together for lunch sometime with some more people from ohigh. Especially since a bunch of us live so close by. I think Benison lives only a couple of blocks away.

I met up with two of my friends from middle school at the BART station. They both live in San Leandro and goes to UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. So they're not used to the "cold" weather. I had a fleece on and they both had big jackets and scarfs. I don't understand how people can wear scarfs all the time... My neck needs to breath too!

Anyway, I introduced them to the Bookmark Bookstore in Old Oakland. Neither of them had ever gone into the area. It's past Chinatown and they had never been on the other side of Broadway. It's a nice area that's very busy during the lunch hours. The Bookmark Bookstore is a store that sells second hand books and gives all the proceeds to the Oakland libraries. The books are all very cheap. We had fun and one of my friends got a William Hung CD as a potential gag gift.

Then we went to the D&A Cafe where we got cheap food. My family used to order out from there a lot and I had been there a few times. They moved to a bigger place just around the corner. Good thing I noticed it. They had happy hour from 3-6pm and we got huge plates of food for around $3 each. I also got a red bean ice thing. Yup. Food was greasy and the waiters just plop food down in front of you and rush about. But it was great. My brother got mad at me for not taking him and leaving him at home though...

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Home again

After 7+ hours of flying, I'm back home again. Mike and Yalu drove me to the airport which was really nice since Boston had just gotten nearly a foot of snow the day before. The flight took longer than usual because of strong headwinds. They even thought we might have to make a landing in Salt Lake City to refuel. Luckily we didn't have to do that.

For some odd reason, I chose a window seat in the back of the plane. I usually like to take an aisle seat up front. But I think it was because there was no aisle seats left and I wanted to sleep. But I offered to trade seats with this couple who had a baby. I didn't want to sit next to the wife who was carrying the baby so I swamp with her husband and took the middle seat across the aisle. The guy in front of me said that he was supposed to be on the same flight the day before and that that flight had actually took off on time! He didn't make it because he was stuck in traffic going a mile an hour and missed the plane.

I was really tired by the time I got back. My parents and brother came to pick me up. But they were really worried about our cat, who had gone missing. When they decided to leave for the airport, they wanted to make sure he was back inside his "room" but couldn't find him. We keep him inside but he runs off sometimes. By the time we all went to sleep, he still hasn't come back. My mom left a window open for him and he finally came back in the morning. My mom thought for sure that he wouldn't be able to find his way back and we'd lose him forever. She said she spent the whole night thinking about whether or not to get another cat and whether or not she would settle for a spotted cat. Anyhow, we're all glad he's back.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Vacation To Do List

Right now I'm taking advantage of free printing at MIT and printing out some past exams. But finals here are next week so it's been hard to find a free printer or printer with ink. I've forgotten how much of a hassle printing is.

Anyhow, thought I should make a to do list. I've been studying but I'm on "vacation mode" and the vacation seems really long.

Academic Stuff
- Borrow books from Berkeley
- Finish examples papers for: 3D1, 3D3, 3C7, 3E3
- Go over notes for: all classes
- Past exams for the past 3 years
- Go over all Chinese vocabulary

Fun stuff:
- Food
- Visit high school
- Enjoy Christmas with family
- Clothes shopping?
- Exercise -- if I don't feel too lazy
- Read manga, watch anime, =P

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Back at MIT...again

So after 7.5 hours of flying, I finally arrived in Boston and was picked up by Yalu and Mike. It would've been a bit painful to drag my stuff all over Boston and Cambridge had they not been there to pick me up so that was great.

Within a couple of hours of being back, Yalu decided to put me to work. I helped her do some surveys for her class, picked stuff up at the Galleria, and... well, I've also went food shopping and have been cooking. I miss cooking.

I miss a lot of things. Especially the people at MIT. I don't fit in at Cambridge. I really don't. When I first got to MIT, I really felt like I fit into the place. Not so at Cambridge. These people party and drink too much. And study too little. When we (the CME students) held a study break, we had to explain what a study break was, and we started the explanation by "well, at MIT, we do this thing called studying..."

And I'm still studying even though the term ended. (Can't believe this) but I borrowed some books from the library and actually did a couple of hours of studying earlier tonight. I even went to class today.