Adventurous Friday

Yesterday (Friday) was a crazy day of fun (and subsequently no work). After my morning class, I went to a meeting for ESW. There are two students from Andalas University visiting us for three weeks. They are here to learn about what we do and for us to learn from them. I think this is a really unique opportunity. We're always focused on sending people to developing countries to do work and learn but rarely do people think about sending people the other way. I think there's probably more value in sending people from developing countries to developed countries. In the end, they're the one who will continue the work.

We had lunch together after the meeting. I find that I can understand very simple conversations in Indonesian. So at this point, if I don't learn the language, it's out of shear laziness. This language is so easy compared to other ones out there.

I went grocery shopping after that. I biked to Trader Joes but only managed to get meat. The vegetables there are expensive and there are not a lot of choices. I decided to go to the Milk Pail the next day because they have good and cheap produce. So much more variety as well. I decided to buy some cream top milk and muscat grapes. They're both amazingly good.

After groceries, I went to play capture the flag with some people in my department. We played in this huge jungle-like area off of Campus Drive. There were tons of trees and bushes. The dirt was super compressible and was full of holes from ground animals (?). Anyway, it made for a couple of interesting games. After we were all tired out from playing two games, we headed to the department happy hour. We had some really good Thai food. I stayed a long time chatting with various people. At one point, a few of us were discussing the varieties of durian and how to tell if they're ripped. And I found out one of the guys here has a twin brother who goes to UIUC. Oat, who also goes to UIUC and visiting Stanford for the weekend, came to that conclusion towards the end of the happy hour. Again, coincidences like this is always so funny and shocking at the same time.

By the time we were ready to leave, it was already way pass 9pm. My neighborhood at Rains held a block party scheduled for 9pm - 1am. I went to this party for a little bit but it was too cold outside. This party was attended by a lot of civil engineers. I knew quite a few people.

I'm cooking for some people later today. These dinners always go for a while so I'm hoping I still have some motivation to do work after that. Going on a geology field trip tomorrow. We're going to see some landslides. Hopefully it will be warmer out, especially while we're in Daly City.