Summer Plans

So I've decided to take PB's offer and work in San Francisco this summer. Probably not as exciting of a location as spending the summer in Europe or China but I really think I will learn a lot with them. The other two places are probably not as keen to have me actually working. I also realized I don't have any experience working for an American engineering consulting company, which is what I want to do after graduating.

Next fall, I think I will apply to some grad schools as well. Apparently, Berkeley is the best in civil engineering. At least US News thinks so. Need to do more research into this topic. Hope I'll manage to study for the FE/EIT exam at home...

Anyway, now that I'm back at MIT, I'm starting to study for the Easter term exams. I think I was supposed to start a long time ago. Oh wells, can't turn back time.

Family and Friends

First off, I added another poll to the right for anyone who might still want to vote. I also added PB to the options. The original post about the 3 options is in this post. The information still applies, mostly.

Again, did not get any studying done today. But still productive. I guess if you look at the bigger picture, it has probably been more productive than doing studying for these exams. Although I really need to stop looking at this "bigger picture" and start studying soon....

After waking up really late, we brought my brother to the district's bilingual office where we found out that he passed the district's requirements to get out of bilingual education. To do this, he not only needed to pass the English proficiency test given out by his school, but he also had to get a certain score in the California state exams as well as good report card grades. And then my mom had to sign saying that she wanted him "relabeled" as a fluent English speaker. I never knew it was this complicated. This is why some of my classmates from high school where getting pulled out of AP English to be tested for English fluency.

Okay, more interesting stuff. I met up with EBMUD people to have lunch. I haven't seen these people in such a long time. More than 2 years already. I feel like I don't know anything about anyone anymore. I realized something a few weeks ago. If I end up working as a civil engineer in the Bay Area for a consulting firm, chances are, I might someday be designing stuff for EBMUD. I could be talking to the same people but they would be clients. Whoa, weird.

I really need to do more of this stuff. Meet up with people I haven't seen in a long time. I think GEO2 people are next up on the list of former coworkers. I really don't have time this time around so maybe next school year. Someone remind me!

After that, I met up with a couple of friends from middle school. I was really happy how this scheduling turned out since I would've probably spent the rest of the afternoon in a library and not do any studying anyhow. We talked mostly about college life and future plans. Well, future plans being how now that we've all lived away from our parents, experienced life outside of the Bay Area, made new friends, went to new places, did all these things, and yet still have no clue what our next 5 years will look like. It was really cool seeing them. We didn't do anything other than sit at Starbucks. Seriously, that's all we did. I showed them the Oakland City Center food places and they were pretty impressed at how nice it is.

A few days ago, I discovered 2001: A Space Odyssey (the book). It was on display at the library so I grabbed it on the way out. Today I went back for the next two books in the series. I think there's supposed to be a 4th book but I didn't see it. Guess you can't expect Book 4 in a trilogy to be easy to find.

My bookshelf

Actually, this doesn't exists anymore since I had to pack everything away. But at one point, I took pictures of my bookself since I've never had one that has so many technical books before. I learned to use the library at Cambridge. I really like my college's library. I'm glad it's a good one because competing with other engineering students for books at the engineering library is not fun.

On the top shelf we have the tiger that sings, tangerines, and other food essentials like nutella and museli. Next comes the Hydrology books that I only used for about a week. We had a total of 2 lectures on hydrology. Chinese and German books. And yes, that's a copy of Let's Go Europe.

That's right, that's a coffee press pot. I used it a few times the first term but now I just stick to tea. It's cheaper, easier to get rid of, and great for dunking tea biscuits in. The coffee thing is now at home with dad. Much of this bookself is occupied with structures books, the class that I am struggling the most with. There's a couple of geotech books and then some notebooks that I hardly ever use.

I don't use this helmet anymore either since I don't bike anymore. It's too dangerous and such a hassle to find a good place to park the bike. I mean, what if it starts raining? Or if you want to walk with a friend? I hate pushing bikes. I also picked up some Garfield books in a bookshop. Garfield Annuals that are published specially for the UK. These are now home as well. And then binders. Not very exciting.

Is this too personal to publish on the MIT Cambridge blog? Or should I just do it? What do you guys think? I can draw fancy arrows for the MIT blog instead of just lame descriptions like I have now.

Stanford, Easter Eggs

Wow, it's Saturday again. Not sure where all the time went. Dentist appointment on Tuesday. Went to Costco and visited relatives on Wednesday. Interview on Thursday. And visited Mike Shaw at Stanford on Friday. This morning I went with my brother and cousins on a Easter Egg Hunt.

Stanford is really nice. Extremely beautiful campus. It took about 2 hours for me to get there, from the time I got out of the house. So it wasn't too bad. I took BART to the end and then went on Caltrain. Mike Shaw and I chatted about various stuff and then ate at a burrito place. On the way back, I got to ride in one of the new Caltrain trains. It was shiny and less bumpy. All the seats on the top deck faced each other so that they were all sets of 4 seats, which I thought was pretty nice. In the old trains, all the seats on top are single seats.

This morning, we got to the egg hunt a little late and nearly all the eggs were gone. But they kept back some eggs for the kids that didn't get any. Doesn't matter anyway since every kid redeems all their plastic eggs for one bag of prizes. There was a raffle but we didn't really pay attention since there was also a golf clinic (the hunt was at a golf course). We got to learn about various swings and such. It was fun.

Oranges

I just ate an orange from our orange tree. And the first sense that came into my mind when I bit into the slice was that the orange is warm, not cold like the oranges you buy from the supermarket where they refrigerate everything. Still warm from the sun. Amazing...

Not a cloud in sight

Back home again! The past week has been like a long dream. I was so busy. Not "hosed" as in stressed but I had so much to do that I just did everything on autopilot. Last Monday, the Dean of Education and Head of Financial Aid came to visit us. A lot of people showed up for the buffet dinner and discussion. I might write about what we talked about in a later post. The cat is behaving badly again... I spent the last part of the week learning the basics of surveying (land surveying). Trying to get heavy equipment exactly over one tiny speck on the ground in freezing wind and rain was not fun. After that I had to take my German test on Saturday. Poting was there to do her French test and we walked back together.

The rest of Saturday was great though. I made brunch with Stella, Mahalia, and Mahalia's boyfriend. Mahalia and her boyfriend were heading off to Geneva for a week that afternoon. Hope they have fun! After that I decided to get a mocha at Cafe Nero because I really like their coffee and will miss going to coffee shops back in the US. There was a huge line because it was Saturday and there was a science festival going on. They were so swamped that they punched my order in as redeeming a loyalty card and I got a free drink. It also might've been that she didn't want to count the huge stack of change I handed her. After enjoying my mocha, I packed my room and suitcases, all in one afternoon. That night, I went out to dinner with Sophia and some of her friends and we ate and chatted for a few hours.

I got up at 4am on Sunday and heading to the bus station. It was still dark outside and raining. Since I had 2 suitcases, I couldn't use an umbrella. I thought about taking a cab to the bus station but didn't see one on the way. I had arrived way too early again and ended up taking an earlier bus which is actually slower since they take a longer route. But it still gets to the airport earlier and it beats standing in the rain for half an hour more. On the bus, I saw Jenn and her mom. They're going to Croatia for a week. Hope they have fun too!

I was really worried that my luggage were overweight since I'm bringing back all my notes. But I had a smaller suitcase that I stuffed with all my books and heavy things so it was fine. You can't imagine how happy I was when I weighted my luggage and they were both under the limit. After checking in luggage, I had to wait until it was 2 hours before my departure time to go through security. That's right, wait to go through security. Ridiculous? Yes, that's Heathrow airport for you. The reason is, airlines there don't have permanent gates like in other airports. There are just too many airlines and airplanes so they have a huge waiting area instead. And when your plane lands and parks at a gate, they'll announce it, and everyone goes to that gate number. I spent a long time walking around this waiting area, trying to decide if I want to buy anything to eat.

My plane was delayed about 30 minutes for boarding and because of that, we had to wait 2 hours on the plane because there are only so many runways and we had lost our place in the queue because of the initial delay. Luckily, the winds were on our side so we were only delayed by about 40 minutes arriving. I watched Juno, which was really good. The food was not bad. The guy next to me doesn't like cheese and gave me his. I also watched Lust Caution, which was pretty good as well. It was mostly Mandarin with a bit of English and some Cantonese and Shanghainese. I also watched some other random stuff including an interview with Wang Lee Hom and listened to a Jay Chou album.

My plane had really amazing views of the Bay Area as we were descending. I had a window seat and sat on the "right" side to see everything. And then I was back! My family came to meet me at the airport. I swear security is more lax now than before. I didn't even have to take my laptop out at Heathrow and the passport control people didn't ask me anything. I was ready with answers to questions like "what were you doing in the UK?". We had hot pot for dinner last night and I slept for 13 hours.

It's been a while since I've seen sunny skies like the one I'm staring at now. It was so amazing when we were driving home. It was warm, sunny, and not a cloud in sight.

I can now go to a casino

I turned 21 this past Sunday, March 9th. I hadn't planned anything besides going to a formal dinner at St. Catherine College, which Poting had organized (for CME people, not for my birthday). Anyway, I had mentioned it was my birthday a few days back when Cindy was making a card for Jeremy (other CME people), whose birthday is March 8th. I commented that since I was born in China, our birthdays are actually on the same "day". Mahalia asked if I was planning on doing anything, and I was like, "uh, writing my FTR?"

So on Sunday, she showed up with some other CME people with a cake. A normal looking yellow cake but made from scratch (by her), coated with heavy cream, and topped with strawberries. It was amazing. And that morning, she send out an email to all the CMe people plus Sophia (my former neighbor). They had managed to get candles and "attacked some Chinese tourists to get them lite" but the wind blew them out before they could get to my room. I was really touched. I can't believe she did all of that for me.

I guess that's one of the best things that came out of going on this exchange: I got to know people that I otherwise would not have. I knew Mahalia and Stella before the exchange. Course 1 isn't that big. But after a year of struggling at Cambridge, cooking together, working late, we've gotten to know each other much more. Same goes to the other CME people. We have a lot of get formals and get togethers here and I just find it so nice to talk to other MIT people. Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed living with Yalu and working with Xiumin and Zawadi just as much but we got along so well that I would've just stuck with them all the time. Doing this exchange forced me to get to know these other MIT people at a level that I would've never done if I had stayed at MIT. I think this is a side effect that none of us really thought about but that I know goes true for all the other CME students.