culture

Cupcake Tour of Beverly Hills

I try to get off campus at least once a week, whether it’s just going to Old Pas for dinner or heading to Micheal’s or Home Depot for materials for making gifts for our adopt-a-frosh program or lumber for Interhouse party dancefloor building. It’s rather hard to get too far off campus, unless you have access to a car. I was very lucky this Saturday to have had the chance to get to Beverly Hills for a walking tour of cupcake boutiques!

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research

How to make $ as a college student

There are plenty of ways to make income as a college student. Most of my friends here at Caltech SURF or intern over the summer, and put their lump-sum salaries from research grants or internship paydays in savings, from which they siphon money during the year for eating out, traveling, or buying clothes, mechanical keyboards, arduinos, and the like. Many Caltech students (including myself) also work during the year. There are several well-known and accessible ways to do this, including:

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clubs

Day Off Means Going Off Campus

The Inauguration of Caltech’s 9th President, Dr. Rosenbaum, was declared an Institute holiday. This means no classes or sets due! We celebrated by sleeping in and getting off campus for brunch at Urth Cafe. Urth has an amazing selection of teas and sweet coffee drinks, and an extensive and delicious menu. It’s a great place to go with friends on the weekends, or family when they come to visit!

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global

Page House Beach Trip

Hi guys, So Remember how I told you I didn’t go on the Fleming beach trip because I wanted to do work and go to the art exhibitions around Pasadena? Well… I ended up going on the Page house’s beach trip instead because Sunday came and I had finished all of my work. This was possible because I’m a dual member of Fleming and Page (and also Avery, but anyways). I am a social member, which means I can attend any of the Page house events (and get it subsidised) but I can’t vote in the Page house election.

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local

ArtNight Pasadena

Hey guys! So instead of going on the Fleming house beach trip to San Diego this weekend, I decided to spend my weekend catching up on some work and doing cultural activities like…going to the Pasadena Art Night! For those of you who are not yet familiar with the Pasadena ArtNight, It’s one day every year when all of the major museums and galleries in Pasadena are open until late, and you can visit all of them for free! There are shuttles from the Pasadena City Hall, and those are completely free of charge also! So Basically it’s a night where you get to go out, enjoy some great street food (from food trucks around the area), look at contemporary art for free and meet loads of different young and upcoming artists in Pasadena. More info here.

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global

Home Sweet Home

Not even three short weeks after arriving in Grenå, my time in Jylland was up. My last few days were bittersweet: on one hand, I was finally going to København after months of planning and anticipation. On the other, the time I’d spent learning Danish, going on adventures, and making lifelong friends with the 50 other international students in Grenå was up. We ended with a bang — our final exams, a series of conversations with our classmates and teachers, finished by noon on Friday, and we had the rest of the day to ourselves before our final dinner and graduation ceremony (read: we starting partying after lunch). The only caveat was that we had to be packed and ready to leave the hotel at 9:00 the next morning.

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research

Beach Trip!

This past Sunday, the Page house RA’s and UCC’s organized a day trip to Huntington beach. We left Tech around 2pm, spent a few hours in water/on the sand, and ended the day with a bonfire, grilling hotdogs and smores.

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global

The Mighty Mountains of Denmark

The second weekend of my summer course, I had the opportunity to explore Nationalpark Mols Bjerge in the center of Jylland [Jutland]. Provided it didn’t start pouring rain, we would be dropped off at one end of the park, hike three kilometers through the park, have lunch on the top of the mountain, and be picked up by the bus on the other side. The week prior, our instructor Torkild had gone on and on and on about how majestic these mountains were, and the tallest hill I’d seen in Denmark so far was the sand dune on the beach outside my hotel, so I was pretty excited to see them.

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global

Safely in Grenå

Yay, first post! I wrote this post when I first got to Denmark, so it’s awkwardly in present tense when it happened over two months ago; however, as I am very lazy, I do not feel like editing it, so I’m posting this in early August rather than mid-October.

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global

En dag i Århus [A Day in Århus]

On Saturday, my classmates and I begrudgingly dragged ourselves out of our warm beds and into the cold, cruel world to see the beautiful port city of Århus. Well, that’s being a bit dramatic: it was cool enough to justify wearing a sweatshirt, and it rained a bit (okay, a lot) on and off, but it was certainly not cold and only slightly cruel. And we even got to sleep in for an extra hour, as the bus didn’t leave the hotel until 9:30! As per usual, I promptly fell asleep on the bus; but when I awoke, I was greeted by modern skyscrapers intermingling with thousand-year-old architecture. Århus has been inhabited since at least the 8th century, and has been a center for shipping since the 1800s, making it a city bursting with history (most of which, I’ll admit, I don’t know).

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culture

A little bit about myself..

Hi everyone! For those of you who don’t know me yet, a brief introduction about myself…

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culture

Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oktoberfest!

Wow, what a busy past few days! I had some friends from high school and Caltech visit me in Munich and we’ve been traveling/doing stuff together. The first main thing we did was visit Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a small village about an hour south of Germany by the Alps. The Partnach Gorge is located here and was the main reason for our visit. It’s a beautiful gorge that opens up to many hiking trails (they even filmed a Dracula movie in it!). Anyway, we spent most of the day hiking around the local trails and had a great time.

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global

Ville lumière, City of Love

Pictures from the city of love.

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global

Cities of Kings

This weekend we (myself and my friends also here at Caltech for study abroad) visited both Versailles and had the first of many days’ visits to Paris. Both have a long history of kings who have lived there, and while we got to see a lot of what Versailles had to offer, we are nowhere near done with Paris.

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global

Breakfasts and Baked Goods in Solvang, CA

Hello, readers! The summer saga continues in this next installment of Beyond the Bubbling Mess with my timely holiday to Northern California following the convenient surrender of my poor younger brother to the clutches of his own college.

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global

Meet the Rangel Gang!

I met a little neighbor Girl:** She was eight years old, she said;** Her hair was soft with nary a curl** That fell long to her hip from her head. She had a bright, inquisitiveair,** And she was daintly clad:** Her eyes were fair, and very fair;** –Her youth made me so glad. “Parents and brothers, little Maid,** How many may you be?”** “How many? Four in all,” she said** And wondering looked at me. –adapted by yours truly from “We are Seven” by William Wordsworth

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research

Stalking Pomona

With Friday, August 22nd came the termination of SURF. And so I went home and began my summer vacation for real. As in away from Caltech. (More will follow about my second half of SURF, but in a later post. I apologize for my anachronistic style.)

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global

Pika Pika!

Imay haveshrieked excitedly at my computer when I first sawthisKotaku articlesome time in July. Seeing as this was a limited-time promotional event and that Ilove the original Pokemon, I absolutely had to visit the Pikachu Cafe before I left Japan. After telling a bunch of my friends about it, I dragged another Techer, Chris, with me to seek out our very own Pikachu foodstuffs.

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culture

Caltech Prefrosh Send-off

So it turns out that even though I’m home, I still cannot escape Caltech! There was a prefrosh sendoff the day I got back, and even though it’s been half a week (coming home is super busy!) I will tell you about it.Caltech really cares a lot about its frosh apparently: there was this meet-and-greet of prefrosh (accepted students going into their first year soon) and current Caltech students at this one Caltech student’s house. I thought it would just be a chance for us to connect with the next year, but a Caltech staff member even showed up! Flown all the way in from California, just for this. I actually deserve to be shamed into oblivion, because I forgot her name (I am literally the worst on Earth with names, I apologize profusely :(), but she was a great pleasure to have around to steer the event, pose questions alongside the frosh, and in general to answer questions as well.There were four (?) prefrosh there, as well as two current students and one alumnus; their families also attended. Together with the Caltech staff we crashed the house of the other current student (than myself!)

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culture

The Last Bookstore/ Tea

I’m basically going to spend the next few posts detailing fun activities.

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global

Adventures in Osaka

Continuing our trip around Kansai, Grace and I travelled to Osaka after a few days in Kyoto. I was really,really excited for Osaka because it’s the best place to get takoyaki and okonomiyaki, both foods I really love. And because we were hungry and in Osaka, of course we had to spend an evening at Dotonbori.

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local

Friend visited me!

Three weekends ago (it does not feel like it’s been that long) I visited my friend in San Francisco. This weeekend he returned the favor. I set down to work and figured out where we would want to go (remembering his sole request that we go surfing), and after a while I devised what I thought was a reasonably representative itinerary for Pasadena and LA as a whole.

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research

Hello, Kyoto!

In Japan, there’s a holiday called Obon that originated from a Buddhist tradition of honoring one’s ancestors. Nowadays it’s an occasion for people to visit their families and hometowns, as well as travel a lot, since it’s a major holiday season and many companies give their employees a few vacation days during Obon. Mitsubishi employees got an entire week off, so Grace and I are taking advantage of this period to visit the Kansai region of Japan, which includes Kyoto and Osaka.

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global

Goldstone Tour + Concert!

This will probably be a long post, but I’ll try my best to keep it concise! So we began with the 2.5 hour drive out the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, where we were then thoroughly ID’d, as one would expect. Goldstone is this huge radio communications facility where we communicate with some of our most cutting edge sattelites, such as Cassini (at Saturn, was communicating when we were visiting) and Voyager[2]. We saw some curious rock formations on the way there, and had some debate on whether they were/could be natural (I hope the picture is good)

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global

Tokyo Station First Avenue

Often when I’m traveling to the Tokyo area, I end up taking a train to Tokyo Station and then transferring to get to my final destination. Tokyo Station is one of the busiest train stations in Japan, with over 30 tracks serving local, shinkansen (bullet train), and subway lines. It’s kind of like LA’s Union Station in that sense. That’s where the similarity ends, though, because Tokyo Station is also surrounded by and attached to several malls.

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research

Chocolate Seahorses, Chocolate Unicorns

Belgium chocolate</h3>

Sea horses in the break room</h3>

Slightly melted bliss</h3>

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clubs

LA Treasures

Howdy, If you’re ever in LA and have some time, Griffith Observatory is the place to go. You can get there via Metro on the Red Line or use Uber like we did, but make sure you check the traffic and Greek Theater concerts before you decide to Uber. We got up there right as the sun was starting to set, which was just perfect because we got to see the Hollywood sign and the sprawling metropolis that is LA only a little while before witnessing the little lights dancing both below (the city) and above (the sugpermoon that night).

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culture

San Diego

I went home for a weekend in July because my older cousin was visiting from Taiwan. He’s a software engineer, which gets me thinking…wow, I have a botanist cousin, a doctor cousin, a software engineer cousin (and a banker cousin). These are the ones that are out of college and have jobs. For those in college, there’s a math major, an electrical engineer, me (the chemical engineer) and my younger brother, who will study chemistry. Science appears to run in the family, until the next cousin in line decides to study finance or diplomacy or international trade.

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global

San Diego

The first night I went back home to San Diego, my dad and I had a midnight feast. We took out the old expresso machine and had coffee with an apple turnover and some eggs. The last time I had such a large meal at 11 pm was when I was seven and my parents were buying our car from the dealership and the consulting went on until 10…

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research

Chinatown

Yokohama is home to the biggest Chinatown in Asia. (I’m not entirely sure how significant that is, considering that China is also in Asia. But still, impressive.) I decided to check it out with another Techer who’s doing research at Tokyo Tech this summer. We met up at Ishikawacho Station, about five minutes away from the actual Chinatown.

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research

Fuzzy Socks and T. S. Eliot

My laundry is all folded and put away. I did all the dishes. It’s that kind of week. I woke up early yesterday to start a procedure in lab. We wanted to make the job take 1 day instead of the usual 2. (The deal was that I go in early and leave a little early and my coworker goes in at the normal time and stays to the normal time.) I like operating on a regular sleeping schedule, but I’m willing to shift things around to make the magic happen.

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research

(46) Guest Blog

Hello world! It’s hard to describe a summer in the Bay Area from my slightly-biased eyes, and it’s hard to keep a senior countdown by myself (you will see why soon). So, to give a fresh perspective on the Bay Area experience, here’s Melissa Wang! I will have a series of guest blog posts over the sumemr to mix up the content a little bit, so stay tuned!

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local

Sandwiches are beautiful things

On Sunday morning, when I left my dorm to go get lunch, I saw a friend longboarding back carrying a soda in a yellow cup in his right hand and a bag in his left. The soda cup, I recognized quickly, was from Which Wich, a sandwhich chain that recently opened a location on Lake Avenue.

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research

What time is it? Summer Time!

Hey guys!

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culture

Summertime is for Picnics

I think it’s safe to say most of us spend the majority of our time indoors. Most of us sleep and eat indoors, anyway. Working indoors just seals the deal for me. I like to do something outside at least once a day. Taking a stroll or going for a bike ride (definitely using the inclusive “or” here) helps keep my legs from cramping up and gives me a good appetite for the batch of zucchini bread I made with a friend last night.

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culture

Chair of Student Happiness

If there is one thing that sets Caltech apart from all other schools, aside from its terrific size and ratio and all the jazz you get to hear about from the admissions officers, it would be one single man on campus. Not because he’s any nicer or easygoing than anybody else on campus, but because he plays a role literally unparalleled at other universities (at least that I know of; it would be difficult at other places due to size of student body). Allow me to talk a bit of the “chair of student happiness” Tom Mannion.

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global

Anime la Expo (Part 3)

These posts are so overdue, haha… ha…

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research

Vs. Mount Fuji

This weekend, I hiked up Mount Fuji.

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research

Most Action-packed weekend thus far!

Yay, I finally had a really fun weekend, so let me tell you all about it :D

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Spotlight


academics

My Trip to the Galapagos!

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.

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culture

Caltech Food Tour

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.

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academics

Some Late-Night Stress-Saving Food Runs

Midterms kept up its unrelenting attack on my sanity this week – at least a little bit. And how did I solve this? Two words.

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global local culture

Quick Trip to the Beach

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.

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