Adventures of the Techers
This past Saturday a group of us woke up early to go on a day trip in the Zipcar. Sebastian, an international from Costa Rica, contributed some deliciousgallo pintoto our breakfast. (You should really click on that link, it looks so good.) Then we were off the Getty Center, a pre-20th century art museum and research institute. My favorite sighting was Gauguin’sHead With Horns; and I was also very pleased to see a piece by Toledo’s esteemed El Greco. Aside from their collection, the Getty’s modern minimalist architecture is astounding. I will spoil you with three pictures this entry, but I won’t expose pictures of the Getty itself as you have to experience it on your own. However, this is the view from one of the Getty’s gardens: After the Getty, we went to Beverly Hills.We walked into Ralph Lauren to look for a nice sport coat, and the cheapest one we found was marked at $4000.Although we couldn’t afford any of it, we reassured ourselves that in a few years these expenses would represent change from our pockets.In short, the Hills is a beautiful piece of LA filled with mansions, high-end stores, neat buildings, sporty cars, and very tall palm trees. Check out this bad boy we stumbled upon (From left to right: me, Dev)
Next stop: Malibu Beach. This was the first time I touched Pacific waters of the States (the first time was inAcapulco , Mexico – great vacation spot). We were having a great time walking on the beach until we got too close to shore, underestimating the waves that are home to the surfing titans – and yes, we got soaked. It was too late to ask the sun to dry us up, however, because he was already waving goodbye:
It was a spectacular sunset. I would take on another dozen waves to see that again. And it’s a great picture, isn’t it? Lan borrowed a Canon SLR from the Caltech Y (So know that this and many other resources are available to you here). After Malibu, we added Payless ShoeSource to our “Places to visit in LA” list and got some dry sneakers and socks. Then we ended up in Westfield Mall on Santa Monica Boulevard, where we enjoyed a fancy dinner at a candlelit Italian restaurant. Finally, we drove around Downtown and in the UCLA campus before heading back to Pasadena. (We decided we will go back to UCLA to meet people and make some friends outside of Tech.) This week is fun in terms of work. We started DC circuits in physics, vector spaces in math, and kinetic theory in chemistry. We have a quiz due tomorrow night for chem, which I’m very excited to take because it should have a good amount of organic chem on it (my favorite). Politzer’s demos this Friday should be very interesting as well. Also, as of last week I started attending ACM95 (Intro to Applied & Computational Mathematics). I’m taking the class next year, but since my schedule allows for some “free time” I decided to get a head start. Now I’m off to get ready for my Intro to Accounting class, so I hope you all have a great start to your week!
