TA-ing next quarter

I think I'm officially a TA now. Had a meeting with the person who is teaching foundations engineering today. I think it will be an interesting class. The class is listed as a 2-3 unit class. If you want to take it for 3 units, you need to participate in a project. The students will act as geotech consultants for a land slide project, run analysis on what happened, and make recommendations as to the remediation scheme. I think it seems like a pretty interesting project and I think the students will learn a lot about geotech engineering. But it seems like a lot of work for me. I can see myself answering questions from students all the time, especially towards the end of the quarter. It will get a bit crazy, as always.

I think my internship experiences will come in handy for this class. I had a feeling this was going to be the case. I knew he would be bringing in some stuff from industry. So I was not so surprised to hear about the project part of this class. Anyway, hope I will learn something too.

After the meeting, I met up with a friend for lunch at Ike's Place. It's a sandwich shop that moved from SF to Stanford. The sandwiches are pretty interesting. Maybe I should have gotten a gift card from them today since they were half off. Another friend of ours walked by and the three of us sat there for a long time chatting.

Ike's Place is located in the Forbes Family Cafe of the new Huang Engineering Center. If this sounds familiar, that's because there's also a Forbes Family Cafe at MIT (Stata Center). There is a huge monitor and video cam set up that is currently displaying something along the lines of "We at MIT congratulates you on the opening of the Huang Engineering Center. Look forward to talking to you." So I think they're going to set up some kind of streaming so that people at the two Forbes Cafes can talk to each other. It would be pretty weird to see friends walking by on the other side.

Packed a bag of mostly work clothes to take home. Feels weird to have to think about what to bring home. It's usually the other way around. Anyway, going home after work tomorrow. Don't really want to lug all my stuff to work but I guess it's necessary.

Failed attempts at cooking

I think something/one is trying to tell me to either go home or eat out. I've had the worst luck in making food this weekend. I really think it's luck and not skill. heh. That apple crumble and crab cake I tried to make failed. And then I tried making hash browns this morning but for some reason, the potato in the middle wasn't cooked all the way through. 

Later today I tried to make carrot and mushroom soup. Very simple, just cook the carrots and mushrooms and dump into blender.What could go wrong? Well, apparently you can put too much water, salt, and pepper. So I had a salty, hot soup. It wasn't inedible though but I had to run out to buy some bread to go with it because it was salty to eat by itself. It was also too watery to be a meal. So I guess the soup deal wasn't too bad. 

I went running in the afternoon. I took my MP3 player along and managed to run Campus Drive without stopping for breaks. I guess I'm back to being so out of shape that I need to have music with me. It's really awkward though, to have things in your ears and wires flying around. I would rather not have them but they do help with motivation. What I really need is a live band that travels with me. Wouldn't that be nice? lol. I might make use of the gym tomorrow since I wouldn't have access to one at home. 

Highlights of today include washing my bedsheets, watching lots of Conan, registering for winter classes, and making a to-do list for tomorrow. Registering for classes is always anti-climatic. I always spend a lot of time trying to find interesting classes. But I can't really decide what to take until I've tried them out the first week. So for now, I've just put in enough credits to be a full-time student. Technically tomorrow is a weekday so hopefully I will be more productive in terms of getting academic things done. 

Done with autumn quarter!

Officially done with the Fall Quarter. Turned in my take-home final Friday afternoon. I feel like the end of this quarter has been a lot less dramatic than the past. I guess it might be because I'm still working on ESW projects. But I guess things in life don't finish either. I think it's such a privilege to be a student and be able to turn things in without really having to put up with the consequences. The worst thing is a bad grade but what does that translate to in real life??

This morning, I slept until around 8:30am, which is late for me. I went out for a run and found that I am very out of shape. I just felt so tired during my run. I took a lot of breaks. No pressure to make the run quick so I took my time. I think my body performs better in the afternoon though. I tried to make crab cakes when I got back. They didn't turn out to be very good though.

One of my roommate's friends brought over a crab. But my roommate was too freaked out by it and refuses to eat it. So I boiled it and had some of it. It was very good. I left it out but no one else touched it. It had been it the fridge for a few days so I thought it wouldn't taste very good anymore. So I tried to make crab cakes. I think I put too much flour though. I'm not entirely sure what crab cakes are supposed to taste like. It always seemed like a waste of crab to me to make them into cakes. Anyway, it's dungeness crab season over here and all the supermarkets and restaurants are selling them.

After failing at crab cake making, I tried to make apple crumble with the leftover apple and pears we have. That didn't turn out very good either. I think it's because I used whole wheat flour and that absorbs more water than white flour. Sigh... Not a good day for cooking overall. For dinner, I had dumplings (pre-made, came out of the freezer).

I finished doing laundry and decided to go walk around downtown Palo Alto. It was a really nice day out. I was outside in short sleeves. I didn't do much but it was good to go walk around. I really enjoy being able to go to a busy or semi-busy place and just wander around. I don't know how people live in quiet suburbs.

Haven't done much today. I figured I should let myself relax a bit before taking care of stuff that I have been putting off.

Studying...

I had the hardest time falling asleep last night and staying asleep. I woke up at around 4 or 5am and could not fall back asleep. I read a bit from a book that I borrowed about networking. It's a pretty interesting book. I'm not sure all of it is applicable but I would like to give some of the tips a try. Anyway, what I really should have done is read the papers for my take home final. As soon as I started doing that, I had no trouble falling asleep! haha.

It's been pretty nice out the last couple of days. I think it might rain Wednesday and Thursday though. I wish it rained Monday and Tuesday instead. Then I wouldn't be tempted to go outside. Now I'm sitting in my office because I just felt the need to leave the apartment for a little bit. It just gets too depressing to be sitting in my room all day. Especially since my room doesn't get very much sunlight. I really hope that the stuff I learn will be put to use in the next few years.

Whew, the quarter is almost over

I am so glad I am not a structural engineer in real life. I don't think my buildings would do very well. I just took the final exam for my structural analysis class. It was a traumatizing experience. Anyway, it's over. I ate lunch with a friend who had also just finished a final exam. The two of us just sat around in the sun and chatted for a long time. I came back to my room afterwards and took an hour long nap. Now I just have a take-home final to finish by Friday. I'm hoping to finish it by tomorrow night though.

It amazes me how rapidly things spread on Facebook and YouTube. Lately, I've been seeing friends from (literally) different parts of the world posting the same articles, notes, videos, etc. It really amazes me that my friends who are completely unrelated could be reading about the same things. Somehow, everyone is talking about the same article or making comments about the same video. And these things are not like world headlines or anything. I wonder how all this social networking will change the future of people's social lives.

Next quarter will be my last quarter at Stanford. I will finally get to TA a class! I'm looking forward to it. I mean, it will probably be a lot of work but it should be interesting. I can now justify having an office in Blume. haha.

Mentors

I went to sleep last night thinking about how school is ending soon and I have to move on with life. I've been talking to my "career mentors" lately. I'm really thankful for meeting a group of people who have been great mentors. I thought about what makes them different from any other people at work. I came to the conclusion that they're people who make it a point to give me advice and help me out without me asking them directly. I think everyone at work will help me if I asked them to. But I've been extremely fortunate to meet people who look out for me.

I started a little notebook with career advice. Yesterday, I went to Borders and got a couple of Moleskin notebooks. I went because I got $5 on my Borders account. I think it's a holiday thing. Anyway, armed with this $5 and a 33% off coupon, I was able to get a two-pack Moleskin notebook for $1. I also got a Piccadilly notebook but the quality is just not as good. It's always the little things but the overall workmanship is just not the same. Anyway, I feel like I get some great advice from people and I should write them down so that I can revisit them once in a while.

Hopefully I'll have the chance to pay it forward and help out younger engineers. I suppose I can do that already with undergrads who are just starting out in civil engineering. Civil engineering is not as specific as some people might think. It's really a category of related jobs. And you can be totally lost as to what to do with an undergraduate degree in this field if you haven't found what you want to do.

Hello December!

Too many things happening these days. Extremely busy the next 1.5 weeks. Homeworks to turn in, finals to take, wrapping up projects, and working. I got up at 6:15am today (Tuesday) and got back to my apartment at 8pm. Not sure why I still have so much energy. I don't seem to be as tired from working as I used to be.... Must be a sign that I'm not doing enough. hahaha.

Sunday and Monday were long days. I got back to Stanford on Sunday at 3:30pm, after eating dim sum, going to Costco, and Ranch 99 with my parents. I headed over to Y2E2 to finish up a programming project with my partner for the structural analysis class. Again, I am so glad I am not analyzing frames for work. I think I would go crazy looking up properties of W whatever beams. Anyway, we worked on the project non-stop until nearly 6pm on Monday, when it was due. I only got 4 hours of sleep Sunday night. All (mostly) because of one negative sign. We spent a lot of time debugging and playing around with things and finally got the program to work properly after going back and checking one of the original files. I can't believe I didn't catch that error earlier...

I can't believe it's December already. In about 3.5 months, I will be done with school. Not sure how I should feel about this. I mean, I know what it's like to go to work everyday (e.g. summer internships) but I'm always thinking about going back to school in a few months. It's like swimming in the same waters but now I'm letting go of the guide lines. Eh, not sure that's a good analogy.

Not entirely sure what's next but I've been extremely lucky all my life. I seem to always get what I ask for. This is usually a good thing. I am usually convinced that I know what's best for myself. It may not turn out to be the best decision in retrospect but somehow I always get what I want. I should seriously think about buying some lottery tickets...