- Motivate
- Activate
- Energize
- Rejuvenate
- Renew
- etc.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Motivation needed
If I ever open up a smoothie place, I'm going to call my drinks:
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Haircut, shopping, happy hours - One More Week!!
One more week of classes to go!! I guess it should be crunch time. And therefore, I spent yesterday shopping. haha. I finally had a Friday free so I decided to go up to SF to get a haircut, do some shopping, and go to some happy hours.
I can tell it's time to get a haircut whenever my hair fills clogs the shower. If this happens even if I wash my hair everyday, then it's definitely time for a haircut. I've been trying to find a non-Asian place (i.e. somewhere where they have experience with non-straight hair). But I gave up and went to Chinatown instead. Every other place is super expensive. I really need to find someone Mexican to take me to a Mexican place. They washed my hair and the lady was leisurely cutting my hair until she dried it. And then my hair started getting super poofy and she realized she had to thin out more of it. This is why I usually don't have them wash my hair beforehand.
Then I attempted to go shopping. I walked around a lot of the expensive shops in downtown and didn't really get anything. I ended up going to Ross and picked out a couple of causal blouses. This shopping thing is pretty exhausting. I think I should have either gave myself more time or had a better plan. Anyway, I'll have more time after classes are over.
The primary motivation for going up to SF was to go to the MIT '09 happy hour. It was held at a bar and we got money towards drinks. The place was pretty nice and there were a group of Course 1 people there again. We're a small class but somehow a bunch of us ended up in the Bay Area. Anyway, it was good to see people and meet some new people.
After that, we drove over to Emeryville where a friend of a friend was having a housewarming party. The housewarming party was at one of the condos in the Emeryville marina. At the end of that marina is a Chinese restaurant that my family goes to sometimes. I've always wondered about those condos. It's interesting. The first set of condos is on Captain Dr. The next set is Commodore Dr. And then there's Admiral Dr. So you get higher and higher in rank as you go towards the water. The place we went to was on Commodore Dr (1 bed, 1 bath). It's a pretty nice place. The view of the bay is great.
I went to brunch this morning with a friend from undergrad. We went to a brunch place on California Ave. This makes the second time that I've been to California Ave. I never knew that that street has all these small shops. It's actually very cute. The food was pretty good and we just chatted for a while. It is getting pretty warm out these days.
Then I came back and did laundry and some cleaning before I started grading the latest foundations homework. It's interesting being on the other side. There's really no reason why people couldn't get full credit for this homework. They were even shown how the output should be. But somehow people forget things. I really don't understand. I think this has made me even more aware of details and how much they affect the outcome of something. It's all about how you present your data. If you can't present it in some coherent way, it doesn't matter that your answer was right in the first place.
Busy day tomorrow. I need to go grocery shopping and make some headway on my own homeworks.
I can tell it's time to get a haircut whenever my hair fills clogs the shower. If this happens even if I wash my hair everyday, then it's definitely time for a haircut. I've been trying to find a non-Asian place (i.e. somewhere where they have experience with non-straight hair). But I gave up and went to Chinatown instead. Every other place is super expensive. I really need to find someone Mexican to take me to a Mexican place. They washed my hair and the lady was leisurely cutting my hair until she dried it. And then my hair started getting super poofy and she realized she had to thin out more of it. This is why I usually don't have them wash my hair beforehand.
Then I attempted to go shopping. I walked around a lot of the expensive shops in downtown and didn't really get anything. I ended up going to Ross and picked out a couple of causal blouses. This shopping thing is pretty exhausting. I think I should have either gave myself more time or had a better plan. Anyway, I'll have more time after classes are over.
The primary motivation for going up to SF was to go to the MIT '09 happy hour. It was held at a bar and we got money towards drinks. The place was pretty nice and there were a group of Course 1 people there again. We're a small class but somehow a bunch of us ended up in the Bay Area. Anyway, it was good to see people and meet some new people.
After that, we drove over to Emeryville where a friend of a friend was having a housewarming party. The housewarming party was at one of the condos in the Emeryville marina. At the end of that marina is a Chinese restaurant that my family goes to sometimes. I've always wondered about those condos. It's interesting. The first set of condos is on Captain Dr. The next set is Commodore Dr. And then there's Admiral Dr. So you get higher and higher in rank as you go towards the water. The place we went to was on Commodore Dr (1 bed, 1 bath). It's a pretty nice place. The view of the bay is great.
I went to brunch this morning with a friend from undergrad. We went to a brunch place on California Ave. This makes the second time that I've been to California Ave. I never knew that that street has all these small shops. It's actually very cute. The food was pretty good and we just chatted for a while. It is getting pretty warm out these days.
Then I came back and did laundry and some cleaning before I started grading the latest foundations homework. It's interesting being on the other side. There's really no reason why people couldn't get full credit for this homework. They were even shown how the output should be. But somehow people forget things. I really don't understand. I think this has made me even more aware of details and how much they affect the outcome of something. It's all about how you present your data. If you can't present it in some coherent way, it doesn't matter that your answer was right in the first place.
Busy day tomorrow. I need to go grocery shopping and make some headway on my own homeworks.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
An Egalitarian Society
One of the really frustrating things I've found about working with Americans on "development" projects is that they don't realize the prejudices that they bring to a project. One of the things in particular is that they don't understand the difference between an egalitarian society and a hierarchical society. The US tries to be a very egalitarian society where everyone is equal and you're judged by what you're capable of doing, what you can contribute, instead of where you're from, your background, your parents, etc. It's taboo to talk about "place in society". Just because you're wealthy doesn't (shouldn't) mean anything.
But these are values of our society. They are part of our culture. And I find that a lot of people don't realize this and look down upon hierarchical societies where "class" is very important. And the hierarchies are different. It might be age, profession, parental lineage, wealth, etc. There are places out there where these things matter. And people will not (cannot) do business with you unless they understand your place in society.
This all stems from a discussion during a seminar where we're talking about ways that we can make seismic retrofit of a school into something that the community would want to adopt for themselves. Someone brought up the point of certificates and if we can certify construction workers who are trained to do seismic retrofits and put certificates on buildings that are seismically safe, this would be a great way to spread the idea. But he proceeded this idea with, "I hope that this isn't the case in all of the country." And people laughed when someone (I won't name who), said that these certificates were "silly" but maybe they'll work. This is all coming from people who are very well traveled, lived in different places, worked on different development projects. I just find it shocking that they still don't understand by saying (judging) these things (e.g. certificates) are silly, that they are imposing their own values on another society. It's as if they think that every society is striving to be an egalitarian one.
But these are values of our society. They are part of our culture. And I find that a lot of people don't realize this and look down upon hierarchical societies where "class" is very important. And the hierarchies are different. It might be age, profession, parental lineage, wealth, etc. There are places out there where these things matter. And people will not (cannot) do business with you unless they understand your place in society.
This all stems from a discussion during a seminar where we're talking about ways that we can make seismic retrofit of a school into something that the community would want to adopt for themselves. Someone brought up the point of certificates and if we can certify construction workers who are trained to do seismic retrofits and put certificates on buildings that are seismically safe, this would be a great way to spread the idea. But he proceeded this idea with, "I hope that this isn't the case in all of the country." And people laughed when someone (I won't name who), said that these certificates were "silly" but maybe they'll work. This is all coming from people who are very well traveled, lived in different places, worked on different development projects. I just find it shocking that they still don't understand by saying (judging) these things (e.g. certificates) are silly, that they are imposing their own values on another society. It's as if they think that every society is striving to be an egalitarian one.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Office 2010
Finally gave in and bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 from the Stanford bookstore. There's some kind of license agreement that Stanford has which lets you buy the Professional Plus version for the price of the normal Home and Student version. Anyway, it's still not cheap. I was using a trial version for a while because this quarter, my team project made it necessary to have at least the 2007 version of Office. I was holding out on buying stuff like this because I doubt I will be using it very much at home. But I think it would still be nice to be able to read documents and work from my own computer. The Office 2000 version that I have is really not compatible. The format gets all messed up. Anyway, hopefully this is a good investment.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
College Cries Foul Over a Copycat - WSJ.com
College Cries Foul Over a Copycat - WSJ.com
Crazy money-making scheme. There's a fake college out there that's using Reed College's name, prestige, photos, and using that to collect admission fees. I don't know how people think they can get away with these things...
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
It's March!
It's March! I'm sitting in the new engineering library. This place opened when the academic year started. The building is a pretty nice addition to Y2E2. I think most students are still figuring out where everything is. I'm sitting on a single person couch with a foot stool against the end of a big bookshelf. I feel like this spot is where people take pictures of college brochures and send them out. If you took a picture of me right now, you would get a picture of a student typing away on her computer in a library with lots of books.
A lot of the furniture here have footstools. It's really nice to be able to put your feet up. I think I prefer that while typing on a laptop.
Got up early today for class. Today is the last Bagel Tuesday so I got half a bagel after class. There used to be Bagel Tuesday every Tuesday but I think they ran out of budget so now it's every other Tuesday. It's not as convenient since it's hard to remember. For the past few weeks, I've been packing a lot of stuff to bring with me so that I can stay on campus all day Mondays and Tuesdays. But I think I'm going to go back to my apartment today for the 3 hour break that I have from noon-3pm. I think I can work much better in my room. My roommate pointed out this morning that she felt like she wasted 3 hours at in our office. She says that if she gets tired at home, she can always nap and then start working again. But in Blume, you're just tired the entire day. I definitely agree. Nap time is very essential! I think there was a PhD comic showing how grad school is like kindergarten.
A lot of the furniture here have footstools. It's really nice to be able to put your feet up. I think I prefer that while typing on a laptop.
Got up early today for class. Today is the last Bagel Tuesday so I got half a bagel after class. There used to be Bagel Tuesday every Tuesday but I think they ran out of budget so now it's every other Tuesday. It's not as convenient since it's hard to remember. For the past few weeks, I've been packing a lot of stuff to bring with me so that I can stay on campus all day Mondays and Tuesdays. But I think I'm going to go back to my apartment today for the 3 hour break that I have from noon-3pm. I think I can work much better in my room. My roommate pointed out this morning that she felt like she wasted 3 hours at in our office. She says that if she gets tired at home, she can always nap and then start working again. But in Blume, you're just tired the entire day. I definitely agree. Nap time is very essential! I think there was a PhD comic showing how grad school is like kindergarten.
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