One of the things I look forward to most these days is Amazon shipments. Is that sad? Amazon has brought so much joy to my college life. I’ve bought everything from water bottles to puzzles to my beloved lamp from Amazon. Each student here has a different mail stop code, which we can enter as part of our address for online deliveries. After our packages go through various magical stations, we get an email that it has arrived, and we go to the Tech Express, located near the North Houses, or occasionally the Keith Spalding building, near the gym, and pick up our shipments. I know people who have ordered office chairs, mini drones, Campbell’s soup, and other life essentials from Amazon. Isn’t modern living great? My most recent deliveries were not from Amazon, but they still brought me immense joy. My mom baked Castella (a Japanese bread, recipe here) for the first time, and wanted to send me some, so she sent it through overnight priority mail. My roommate and I have been enjoying it (with milk from open kitchen) ever since:
Midterms are over! For me, at least. I just turned in my math midterm, which brought back memories of Math 1a and that midterm. Math 1b was a lot more chewable than Math 1a, as evidenced by this comment on my midterm last term, from the professor himself:
I’m currently enrolled in E/H/Art 89, New Media Arts. The class is a mix of an art history, art discussion, and project-based class, where each week we discuss a new topic from the history of Dadaism and Marcel DuChamp’s “Ready Made” art, to cybernetics and glitch art, to Survival Research Laboratories’ destructive robots. The class’ lecturer, Hilary Mushkin, organized a panel last week for two artists and a Caltech professor to discuss their work in the creation of automata and the blend between art and technology in this space.
I was talking to a prefrosh on the phone the other day as part of our phone calling campaign for admitted students, and she asked if there was a lot of interaction between undergrads and grad students. I remember last year, when I was a prefrosh, someone asked the same question in a Techerchat. Answers from upperclassmen varied from “No, you're kept in separate cages on opposite ends of campus,” to “What is a grad student?”
In the middle of last term, we bought a puzzle. Well, I tried to buy a puzzle, but couldn’t figure out how to ship it to myself, so my mom bought the puzzle, but accidentally had it delivered to our house, then my mom bought the puzzle again, and it finally came to Caltech. Good work, puzzle. It’s a rather beautiful puzzle, based on a painting by Rosina Wachtmeister. If you’ve been to Germany, you may have seen her work. She makes these beautiful porcelain cats that sell for big bucks. Here are some that we got from Germany/Czech Republic:
It’s been a pretty crazy week. I haven’t gone to sleep earlier than 3:30 a.m. since Monday night (today is Sunday). My latest was 5:30 on Wednesday night. Through this terribly unhealthy experience, I’ve realized several things.
I would love to share with you everything I love about my house. The friends I’ve made, the parties we’ve thrown, the shenanigans that occur at 1AM when CS21 sets are due at 2AM…but there isn’t enough space in any blog post to do that. So I’ll share a few little things that make my life in a Caltech house really amazing.
Hi everyone!I went to India this winter break, and I’d like to talk a bit about it, because a) there are some pretty pictures that go along with it and b) it was honestly one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had.I usually visit India every other summer break for family reasons: this time, however, I went to work for a nonprofit called Ekal Vidyalaya (usually called Ekal for short). Essentially what Ekal’s been doing for the past twenty years is establishing one-teacher primary schools in isolated, rural villages all across India; in addition to lowering India’s rampant illiteracy, the hope was that education would slowly work its magic and enable the village to develop infrastructure, a self-reliant economy, and a strong community in a way that donations and outside help never could. So far, some 56,000 schools have been built.Recently, Ekal has branched out its aims and focused on something called “Gramotthan” (literally meaning “village upliftment”). This includes things like setting up resources for farmers to learn about how to get more income and nourishment from their fields; teaching skills like sewing and repair work to give people (especially women) secondary sources of income; and setting up a village council to identify and address ongoing issues in the village.
This is a late post, because Page’s ski trip was the first weekend of this term. Whoops. I can tell what you’re thinking…
Greetings! I’m Gloria, and I’m a second term frosh at Caltech. First term was a whirlwind of food, fun, and pass/fail. I wrote my blog description last term, when I was on 51 units, 9 of which were made up of Cooking, Aerobic Dance, and the Chem pizza class, in which we eat pizza and listen to Chemistry/Chemical Engineering faculty members talk about their research. This term I’m still on pass/fail, but with 48 units, and a pretty basic frosh schedule: Math, Physics, Chem, Chem lab, CS C track, Philosophy, and Ceramics. I’m halfway through the first week of classes, slowly extracting myself from my winter break dormancy and returning to a productive mindset.
While shopping for my dorm room, my parents bought me three boxes of Haetban instant microwaveable rice, which has the tagline “Rice that tastes better than rice!” They also bought me a box of instant ramen, three packs of rice vermicelli noodles, soy sauce, and fish sauce. The only problem was that the rice (and the rice alone) had an expiration date of January 10, 2015. At the time, we believed that Caltech didn’t provide any food over the weekend, so my parents estimated that in ten weeks, I could have rice for two meals a day every Saturday and Sunday, with some breaks, and thus easily get through 36 bowls of rice in a term. However, once I got on campus, I learned that Caltech was trying a new thing this year in response to popular demand: holding open kitchen in Chandler on weekends from 10 am to 2 pm. This meant that there were fresh fruits and sandwich fixings available for lunch on weekends. Additionally, I often ate out or had dinner provided by different clubs and events, so my rice consumption was even lower.
I am a member of the Academics and Research Committee at Caltech. The ARC is an undergraduate committee that serves as a liason between students and faculty, advising the Faculty Board and other committees on academic policy pertaining to UGrads, and promoting improved teaching practices. We are currently on a retreat to discuss all we have done so far, and what we are planning to do for the rest of the year.
The Student-Faculty Programs Office organized a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) tour for us a few days ago, and it was one of the most exciting places in which I have ever stepped foot. Immediately upon arrival, we were greeted by friendly faces who commenced our tour with a brief history of JPL and its goal of propelling rockets into space.
I turned in my Math3 set at 2pm, my CS21 set at 4pm, my CS2 set at 4:58pm, and then I headed to Anaheim for a concert at the House of Blues in Disneyland!
Hey guys! Every year a lot of houses go on ski trips. This year, Avery went to Mammoth Mountain, which is a comfy six hour drive from school. Here are some shots from ski trip.
Welcome back! This is the second part in a two-part installment of my fall term adventures, so if you’d like to read it from the beginning, you can start here. Continuing on… 6. Interstellar and Formal Dinner with Professor Kip Thorne Every house has a formal dinner once per term when we dress up all fancy-like, invite professors and other guests, and are served really delicious food.I don’t remember what exactly was in the dish, but this is what it looked like:
Here are some very important life goals I managed to achieve as winter break drew to a close this year:
It feels incomplete to jump to winter break without explaining what happened for the rest of fall term, so I shall give a quick, picturesque summary.
As a sophomore, I now live in a single slightly “off campus” in Braun House (ie. literally across the street, rotated perhaps 30 degrees east from Venerable). Single life is…not as bad as I thought. My room is amply spaced and contains the usual wonders–a sink, an AC; my only complaint is that the shelves are rather high, so I have to stand on my chair to reach. That being said, I do miss having a roommate. I bought a carpet because she bought a carpet and it filled up the emptiness in the room slightly.
This winter break I went on a family outing, just my parents and me, to Hawai’i (pronounced Hah-vye-YEE). This wasn’t initially my idea; I’d have prefered to stay home and help out my parents around the house, doing the chores with which their aging bodies now struggle. But nope, the day after my finals in France I was informed that in a spontaneous decision my parents had decided to send us to Hawai’i between Christmas and New Years, a serendipitous turn of events by all means. We were unable to find accomodations at our island of choice, the ever-gorgeous Maui, so we in yet another fortunate stroke of luck booked for the Island of Hawai’i instead, or colloquially known as the Big Island.
The lovely ladies of Venerable House decided to compile together a Girls’ Night on 11/14, which would entail watching rom coms, decorating each other, and eating cupcakes. (This prompted the men of Venerable House to hastily throw together a Guys’ Night of beverages, action films, and card games.)
At the end of my 2014 SURF, my mentor told me that she had submitted our project abstract to the American Geophysics Union (AGU) 2014 Fall Meeting and that should I find funding I should feel welcome to go. I ended up applying for Caltech’s Hausner for what turned out to be a three night funded trip to San Francisco! I just finished up the trip, my first conference, and while it was admittedly a geophysics conference for someone certainly more interested in the harder fields of physics, it gave me a terrific understanding of what academic life could possibly look like.
After going to Vienna, the world’s heart of classical music, I suddenly realised that music is a bigger part of me than I’d ever realized. Immediately upon returning I scanned through the great Parisian concert halls for performances I could attend before leaving, and though I found no more operas, which were my original target, I did find two concerts at the Salle Pleyel.The Salle Pleyel is a slightly smaller concert hall than the great opera houses, and is much more intended as a recital hall, almost built for piano performances. Not surprising given the homage of the name to a composer and the founder of a great piano company of the 19th century, the height of Romantic pianicism.The first concert I found was a concert with Emanuel Ax playing the Brahms second Piano Concerto with Bernard Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in the first half and with the latter two performing the Fourth Brahms Symphony in the second half. I couldn’t find any cheaper tickets, and dropped 65 euros on this ticket, which also landed me in quite a nice seat
As part of the Caltech Board plan, we get a little over $400 a term to spend on Declining Balance (DBal), which can be used in Chandler Dining Hall or the South House Kitchens for lunch or Breakfast, or in the C Store or Student Coffee House (Chouse) at any time. DBal doesn’t roll over between terms, so if you have leftover DBal during finals week, you try to buy up the CStore to get your money’s worth! In previous terms, I’ve bought several boxes of Clif Bars to bring home for my father (who loves them), or bought a dozen pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for my house (impromptu ice cream party!)
The title was spared no words because it merits no more; London, perhaps the single most diverse city on the planet. Indeed, the only thing it famously lacks from its decorated coffers of riches is sunlight. A veritably enormous city, it is a forefront authority in just about any conceivable field and has riches upon riches for every last visitor.
It was about time Tinder right-swiped a college campus. Two weeks ago, following their first (!) career fair appearance ever, the startup Tinder came to Caltech for a networking event. Tinder’s lead recruiter met up with a few Techers the week before the event andplastered the undergraduate houses with posters advertising the event.
I love breaking out of Tech for a few hours to do something very much non-Techy. Page House had formal dinner on Friday night, so at 4pm a bunch of girls got all dolled up and headed to Pasadena City Hall to take pictures of each other (fun fact: that building is where they film the exterior for Pawnee City Hall in Parks and Recreation). We had to go early, before the sun set, but most of us had PS12 recitation from 3-4PM, so we put on makeup and did our hair before lecture. #toofancyforclass After the sun set, we went across the street to the Paseo Colorado outdoor mall, where a few stores had already put up holiday decorations. There were large wreaths, lots of string lights, and a giant Menorah. While in the mall, we went to Bath and Body Works for the smells. Soo many amazingly scented things (I went home with a candle).
I have been procrastinating my PS12 reading today by shopping online for holiday gifts! Double procrastination by writing this blog post (and making the graphics using Canva)!
Wow, as I write this blog entry sitting on our final plane ride back to LA, it feels like the past two weeks have been a blur.
I get distracted pretty easily. I read an op-ed letter in the New York Times last week that described attention disorders as manifestations of evolutionary tendencies to seek out stimulating activities. The author insists that people who have short attention spans just need to find activities that they, personally, find interesting, and they can focus as sharply as anyone.
Venice, Venezia, the city on water. Yet another quintessentially Romantic city added to this itinerary. When I checked online, one person described the journey to know Venice as "making sure you give her the shot she deserves," as rampant tourism has turned the city into a bustling, crowded, obnoxious shadow of what it once stood for.
Florence, Firenze. While Rome sports its millennia of ancient culture Florence holds its own being the birthplace of the Renaissance. Moreover I personally think Florence is a much more photogenic city, but you may judge for yourselves When I first arrived I ran into a 76 year old man whose influence on me will be the subject of a separate post. Nonetheless, I will say I spent my entire first evening with him, wandering around the city and chattering. I will certainly admit I prefer to travel alone now, as I hardly got to see anything with the constant conversation. Sometimes, when the goal is incessant fascination, company only gets in the way of the present. While I need my human interaction, just like any social human being, I still believe that some hangings are best done alone, and now I am firmly of the opinion that backpacking is one of them.
This week was the Vacances de Toussaint in France, and apparently reading week all across Europe. With these nine days I chose to make a trip to Italy, being inspired by a friend who chose to do the same, though I planned independently. Thus it was so that within to days, three days before departure, I booked two flights, two trains, and three hostels in Italy. My three cities in my itinerary were the three usual ones: Rome, Florence, and Venice; Roma, Firenze, Venezia. Not knowing any better, I allotted each three days.
It’s been over three months since my trip to the Galapagos, and I am still thinking about it. For seven days, we all woke up at 5:30 am on the boat, ate breakfast together, and went out as the sun was rising on our morning hike to catch frigatebirds mating or iguanas spewing salt from their nostrils. Our days were spent snorkeling with turtles, sea lions, and schools of fish, and our nights were spent sitting on the bow of the ship, talking all together under the stars. It was truly a spring break I will never forget.
Caltech may be a small campus, but it has a large variety of food options. There are three main dining locations on campus — The Lee F. Browne Dining Hall, the Hameetman Center (which houses our beloved Red Door Cafe), and the Broad Café.
Midterms kept up its unrelenting attack on my sanity this week – at least a little bit. And how did I solve this? Two words.
Although there are a lot of smaller things, such as midterm smoothies and milkshakes (Blacker does something similar to this) and some larger things like Faculty Dessert Night, the soc team usually agrees that beach trip is the most work.