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May 28, 2003
-Yesterday I spent maybe an hour in the morning shooting hoops (and sucking at it) at the RSF, after which I returned to the apartment contemplating what the heck to do... TV was the answer for most of the time, outside of preparing food to eat. One notable highlight was the Mavs' comeback victory over the Spurs. Dallas was down by 17 late in the third only to come back brilliantly in the fourth to win by 13. If it only causes a delay in the Spurs' series victory oh well...
-Today the boredom simply continues... I woke up to the sounds of hammers pounding away at the outer wall of the apartment building. Apparently the south wall of the building was poorly constructed and leaked rainwater during last winter's storms. Management decided the best thing to do was to repair the wall by demolishing the outer stucco and replacing it. This is supposed to be on-going until August 20th. Yay... something exciting i guess... After waking up, the TV went on almost instantly and, after much channel-surfing, it came to rest on PBS. So I spent an hour watching about how to properly punctuate English sentences, which, oddly enough, is something that I never learned in high school. Another interesting tidbit about my deficient (at least in English) high school education is that I never had formal teaching in English grammar until 12th grade. Yes, twelfth grade, in AP English Literature no less. Ah... and so after an hour of the show I now know: that there is a difference between and dash and a hyphen, that periods and commas always come before ending quotation marks, that colons and semicolons always come after ending quotation marks, and that question marks and exclamation points can be before or after the ending quotation marks depending on context. How useful will this knowledge be to me in the future? I'll probably forget by tomorrow.
-Today President Bush signed a $300 billion tax cut with the hopes that it will be able to stimulate the economy. DREAM ON... Heck, President Reagan demonstrated that tax cutting to stimulate the economy simply doesn't work. All this tax cut will do will be to increase the ever increasing budget deficit. Democrats aren't putting up much of a fight and next year's election looks like a rout for Bush and the Republicans.
May 25, 2003
-BORING!!!!!!!! Waiting to start research has been pretty painful. I've been pretty desparate to do anything outside of watching TV in my apartment. Yesterday was pretty cool, as I watched the College of Engineering's Class of 2003 graduate. The whole time I was thinking, hmmmm this will be me in a year, how scary!!!... After the ceremony I helped pour champaigne and sparkling apple cider at the Department of Bioengineering reception, only to return home to yet more boredom. Today I accompanied my roommate to the airport. Unfortunately it only killed two hours, although I managed to have a rather interesting conversation with an 82 year-old man on the way back to Berkeley. After I got home ate some lunch and thenI watched 3 hours worth of Food Network watching the same cook cook 6 different things. Now I await dinner, wondering how boring Memorial Day will be.
May 19, 2003
-Wow... so I've gone over 3 months without writing anything in this poor excuse for a blog. In any case, this is being updated only because I'm freaking bored now. My last final (a bitch of a test I must say) was today, while everyone else seems to be just starting, I'm done. I will not be going home for the summer, because I will be training in a cell biology lab!
So what has happened in the past 3 months? Obviously a lot... Unfortunately it's so much that I couldn't possibly write it all down... oh well...
February 13, 2003
-Attended Real World Engineering, a program put on by the College of Engineering that brought a panel of Cal engineering alumni to talk about their lives in the real world. They, unfortunately, provided a somewhat bleak market outlook... hopefully the market turns around by summer of 2004... On the bright side had a ton of free sushi from the event!
February 9, 2003
-Michael Jordan played in his last NBA All-Star Game today, and what a game it was. Jordan seemingly hit the game winner with three seconds left at the end of the first overtime; the shot was a fading, high arking jumper from the baseline over the outstreched arms of Shawn Marion. Jermaine O'Neal foolishly fouled Kobe Bryant on a desparation three with one second left; Bryant tied the game by hitting two of three free throws. The Western Conference went on time win the game in the second overtime. It's sad knowing that it was Jordan's last All Star Game, but I'm glad I watched it.
February 8, 2003
-All I did today was cook and play Skies of Arcadia: Legends. Nice day, eh? I made cream puffs in the morning and a spinach lasagna for dinner. They both turned out alright, though not as good as expected. I think I need to get a better cookie sheet for baking... although I hardly do it.
-The California men's basketball team swept the Oregon schools on the road, after getting pummeled in two difficult games last week in Arizona. They beat the Oregon Ducks tonight 86-75; Thursday night it was Cal 84 - OSU 71. This brings their record to an impressive 16-4 (9-2 in Pac-10). Next up are home games against the Washington schools. Go Bears!
-The UCLA men's basketball team finally won a game 71-70 over Georgetown after losing 9 games in a row. Although I have no sympathy for UCLA, it is shocking that they could have lost 9 games in a row and currently stand 9th place in the conference.
February 6, 2003
-I attended my first EJC meeting as a representative for TBP. It was fairly uneventful, except for some unpleasant remarks about our TBP president and about TBP in general. When talking about TBP, someone remarked "aren't those people supposed to be smart?" which elicited a roar of laughter from the non-TBP people in attendance. I sat there pretty shocked and amazed by everyone's juvenile reaction. Hopefully these insults are not a regular feature of the meeting.
-I saw my first live, running bioreactor down in the basement of Tan Hall. So cool!! It was culturing some fungi that produce a precursor chemical to aflatoxin, a carcinogenic compound found in some infected crops.
-"Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it, you don't understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you think you understand it, except for one or two points. The third time you go through it, you know you don't understand it, but by that time you are so used to the subject, it doesn't bother you anymore." Arnold Sommerfeld
-"Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they will never be disappointed." Anonymous - both quotes from Y. Cengel and M. Boles, Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach
February 5, 2003
-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence of Iraq's supposed defiance of several U.N. resolutions to the U.N. Security Council in an effort to shore up support from the Council. The evidence seems strong, but the Iraqi ambassador dismisses it as fabricated. France, China and Russia retain their reservations despite the evidence.
-My take on the presentation of the evidence was that it was only a courtesy call that was only meant to gather support only after the decision was made to go to war, which I believe it already has been. Though I do not agree with the war itself, France, China and Russia should remove their reservations and comply. If they do not, the U.S. will simply act on its own, which calls into question the ability of the U.N. to regulate world peace. What good is the U.N. if member countries are allowed to simply ignore its will? Should the U.S. go into war without the blessings of the Security Council it would represent the reduction of the U.N. from a world body with the power to regulate to a symbolic, useless body of bickering diplomats.
-France stands to lose the most from the current course that events follow. Russia still wields significant military power, including extensive nuclear war capability, while China continues to grow both economically and militarily. Right now, France has a very large voice in international affairs due to its permanent seat on the Council, wielding the all important veto power. However, when the U.N. ultimately becomes the useless body it is currently transforming to, France will be left with nothing but its useless permanent seat on the defunct Security Council and nothing to back its voice in international affairs.
February 3, 2003
-According to Andrew Jackson, former President of the United States and face of the twenty dollar bill, "fear is better than love" with an Indian. (From video: How the West was Lost Part IV: The Trail of Tears)
-"In barely-sufferable technospeak, a cat is an open, self-regulating and self-reproducing heterogenous system... The system requires nothing more for reproduction than a suitable feline of the opposite sex."( D. Haynie, Biological Thermodynamics)
February 1, 2003
-I woke up today to calls of my roommate. He shouted that the space shuttle Columbia had blown up over his home state of Texas. Instantly, I hopped out of bed and was filled with the same surreal feeling that I had that fateful Tuesday, September 11. It couldn't be happening... not so soon... the nation had not healed yet...it had to be a bad dream. And yet, like September 11, the surreality quickly dissipated, replaced with profound grief. Seven astronauts, six Americans and one Israeli, perished in an accident that followed, nearly to the day, seventeen years after the Challenger blew up on takeoff. I find it strange how the deaths of those particular seven people can make so many people so sad, when countless thousands die in anonymity elsewhere everyday. Perhaps it is because they were our hopes and dreams; they represented the innate sense and longing of discovery that composes us all. They died for science. On that note, we cannot let this tragedy discourage us from further exploration of space. The space shuttles will fly on, only 3 of the 5 remaining... and should not stop until they are replaced by newer technology. But we cannot forget though that the loss represents yet another tragedy this country and its embroiled citizens must deal with. The economy is in shambles, the war drums beat loudly, and terrorism waits for the opportunity to scare again. What else could possibly go wrong? There is no end, no "light at the end of the tunnel," that draws near...
January 26, 2003
-The TBP officer's retreat was fun, even though I didn't go skiing. I did get to skip rocks at Lake Tahoe and played a fun game of Cranium with a bunch of people last night. The mountains were extraordinarily relaxing... I felt closer to nature with its clean air, tall pines and piles of melting snow. Of course the commercialized ski industry kind of takes away from the pristine of it all but still it was very stark contrast to the urban, dirty environment of Berkeley.
-The Super Bowl was pretty lame... Tampa Bay schooled Oakland 48-21. Of course people in Oakland rioted, which brings up the question... would it have been worse if Oakland won?
January 24, 2003
-The famous epistemological question: "How do you know you know what you know?"
January 20, 2003     Martin Luther King Jr. Day
-Last semester was pretty fun, especially pledging for TBP (national engineering honor society). Hopefully i have fun serving as one of TBP's EJC reps this semester. As for classes, they were ok, although each had annoying properties that will be probably better remembered than the subjects themselves. BioE153 was a bit too haphazard: far too many lecturers, to the point where i am not sure what i got out of it. Chem130a just had plain awful subject material, and ridiculous tests. EE100 had the worst labs from any class i've taken. MCB102 is MCB, too many premeds make the class overly competitive. Despite these annoyances i did very well gradewise.
-After my last final exam (chem), i went to watch LotR:TTT with my roommates and daniel (thanks daniel for the ride). What a movie! I felt like i was right there with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli! All those Uruk-hai and ents! I really can't wait until The Return of the King comes out next December! It was so good i actually saw it twice in the theater! and for those that know me well, you know i don't watch very many movies at all.
-Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new semester of school. Yay (sarcastic). I am not sure what to expect quite yet of this semester. I have a feeling that it might be easier than last semester mainly cuz i'm only taking 3 techs as opposed to 4 like last semester. Then again, i've become readdicted to videogames, i suppose they'll help make the semester "difficult."
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