I’ve been meaning to do this kind of a blog post for a very long time! I was finally motivated enough (it took a HUGE butterscotch pudding to motivate me) to go out with a camera and snap away the pretty flowers around campus. My camera skills are not top-notch, so keep in mind Caltech’s actually way prettier in real-life. It was really sunny and I really don’t know how to adjust my camera settings, so sorry if there’s a whole lot of glare…Caltech is very clean, but not everything is so…electric white? After four years here, I still don’t know if we actually have a main entrance (I think it’s the side from Wilson into Millikan just because there’s a lot of flowers, but I started my walk from the side next to Moore. I don’t know what this building is for, but it’s pretty! Behind it is Avery and Annenberg.

This past weekend was our Interhouse party BFP, also known as Big ‘Fleming’ Party. It was similar to the other Interhouses, but this time, since I’m part of the Social Team, I took part in preparing for it. There were some ups and downs, but for the most part I enjoyed the process. Apart from the organization aspect and getting food and drink, the preparation was the building and painting of the dance floor area.

Roses are red,Violets are blue,Go to bed Frosh,Ditch Day’s tomorrow.

For Alumni Weekend, our house organized a dinner with Tom Mannion. The food was delicious, as always and I finally got to meet the alums that graduated a couple years ago I always hear about from the upperclassmen. But of everything, I found the older alums the most interesting. Back then, wrestling against other houses in the dining hall was not a common experience.

From May 17 (sorry for the delay) One of arguably the best traditions at Caltech is Ditch Day. It started back when the seniors would pick a day to go off campus, skip classes, etc. But the underclassmen didn’t like this so they started pranking the rooms of seniors, flipping furniture upside-down and stuff like that. And so, Ditch Day evolved into a day that the seniors have planned a day filled with activities for the other students. It’s treated as a holiday where classes are cancelled and assignments aren’t due. The date of Ditch Day is supposed to be a surprise, and in response to us asking the date, seniors always say it’s tomorrow, regardless of the day. It’s funny when if the frosh are up late with sets or something, a senior will come by and say, “go to bed frosh, Ditch Day is tomorrow”. This is because Ditch Day starts at 8am, which is quite early considering my earliest class this term is at 10am.There have been a couple fake Ditch Days, when the seniors will bang pots and pans, literally, around the house at 8 to wake everyone up. This past Friday we had a fake Ditch Day, but the seniors had still planned a little something for us though it was fake. At around 8:30, a bunch of seniors broke out of this walled up portion of the Olive Walk. Our task was to use duct tape to catch as many seniors we could and tape them to trees and pillars in a designated location. Each house was given duct tape in their house color to keep track who got who. I enjoyed it a lot because the event was light-hearted and fun, with groups of underclassmen chasing seniors with long peices of tape.

One skill I wish I had held onto was being able to memorize things quickly. Name, being able to memorize all 200-something pokemon when I was in middle school. But I’m getting distracted again, as usual. Yesterday was a campus wide fake ditch day. My alley and I were busy making oreo truffles and white chocolate rose truffles when some seniors came by to remind us to “GO TO SLEEP, FROSH!” If you do attend Caltech, that’s something you’ll hear quite often, even when you’re long since past frosh year! :P Friday turned out to be a fake, but it was fun nonetheless. We were divided into teams by house/gender, and were supposed to chase down the seniors. Each team was armed with their own color of duct tape, so in the end, we got to tally up our “kills”. On the actual day of ditch day, if we spot a senior on campus, we’re similarly allowed to duct tape them. Usually this means to a tree, but last year, my friend was taped down to the passenger seat! It was a pretty short fake, but I think the real ditch day is coming up soon! I can’t wait, it’s always a lot of fun. As juniors, we are supposed to start stacking soon too. After ditch day, a “Day after Tomorrow” fake is held. My favorite one was a pacman stack, during which we chased after giant fruit and had to avoid the ghosts (Seniors are called ghosts after ditch day).

Hi alls,Midterm results back! Meaning a wave of bi-polar happy-sad goopmush, which gets looked at, stared at, and thrown away because theres no time. Anime is a 50 unit class. (50 hrs a week), on top of normal classes, leaves no time for grit.Admittedly though, I watch far less than that now.

As we reflect back on our fabulous and eye-opening Swiss adventure, we would like to share with you some of our favorite memories.

So I’m in a lab class this term; we have take home physics labs which involve deriving equations, building circuits, and measuring values from them. Last Sunday, my partner and I were in the SAC doing our experiment and saw something through the window blinds. Pulling up the blinds, it was a peacock! Like what?

zzzzZZZzzzZZZZzzz…

We decided to have a very healthy breakfast today so instead of our usual bread and cheese, we bought a box of macarons each from Sprungle Confiserie! I also got a cappuccino muffin, a blueberry muffin and an exotic fruit juice smoothie (pineapple, papaya, banana, etc.). We then caught a train from Zurich to Stein-Am-Rein through Schauffhausen.

We got up early and ate at a riverside café for breakfast.

Naturally, a large majority of characters in Shounen(targeted to teen male audiences) fighting Manga/Anime come with their own secret, all powerful, technique, which will, when activated, take down their opponent in a flashy explosive ball of fire, or otherwise materialized mass of destruction. One of my personal favorites is Zekka, a character from “Battle Angel Alita: Last Order”, whose ultimate technique, the Dragon Slayer, is a punch loaded with antimatter produced from the particle accelerator he molded out of his own abdomen. Zekka below: Large muscular men and flowers are totally compatible.And a detailed blueprint design of how to implement your own intra-particle accelerator.(read right to left)

Hi everybody! Sorry about the long absence in my blog, but I suddenly got overwhelmed with work and simply didn’t have the time. (To be quite honest, I probably don’t have the time now, but writing this blog is another thing that helps me relax.) So, as promised last time, I’ll tell you how I got to meet Stephen Hawking (for the second time)! Now, I don’t consider myself a girly-girl by any means.

For those of you who attended Pre-frosh Weekend a couple days ago, congrats! It’s an exciting time for you, and I’m sure you’re choosing between many amazing universities around the country.

Heh, I’ve been wanting to label a post with that for a while! At least this time it will make more sense: MAD is the Caltech Y’s annual Make a Difference Day. We organize up to 20 different off campus volunteer projects for 200 volunteers. Usually these projects are tutoring, environmental restoration, working with animal shelters and serving at local homeless shelters. Last year, I led a group to help out at the Red Cross. We cleaned their cars and got to take a ride in one of them! The vehicles, of course, is equipped with much more than a normal car because the Red Cross provides emergency first aid and disaster relief services. This year, I led a group to help out at MACH1, “Move a Child Higher”. This group gives horseback riding lessons to disabled children. One of the regular volunteers there that we met actually used to receive lessons because of his autism. The horses are all very gentle, especially around the children. The organization was founded by a woman who suffered from polio herself, but was able to ride competitively nonetheless. She said that her goal in founding MACH1 was to give every child a “chance to dance” and that learning to ride a horse gave her the courage to overcome her polio. We deweeded, swept and raked the grounds for them, and also got to groom one of the horses, Heidi! Heidi is a Norwegian Fjord, and has a really beautiful cropped black and white mane. Her coat is a sandy tan color and she was very patient with us. We also met the other horses as well as a donkey. After getting freshly groomed, the donkey decided to roll around in the dirt XD As usual, I took a lot of pictures ^^

It was a Sunday, which means that most shops and things were closed, so we decided to go hiking instead. We took a bus and went to the nearby Hollgrotten Baar (Hell’s Cave).

Today, we took a very early morning train from Lugano to Zurich that was exactly 2 hours and 40 minutes according the the very precise Swiss train schedule. When we arrived in Zurich, it was much colder than sunny and warm Lugano and it was even raining heavily! We had to pull out our raincoats from the bottom of our backpacks since we had not used them since hiking in the Alps. Our hostel was right in the center of downtown Zurich and so it was a convenient location. However, we spent some time wandering around downtown in rain from the train station, looking for our hostel. Once we found it, we hiked up four flights of stairs to get to the hostel lobby since it was above a restaurant. Then, we climbed up another three flights of stairs to our floor! We decided to go exploring despite the rain. We ran into some graduate students who were attending the local university, ETH. One of them, Haffi, had been at Caltech for one summer as a SURF student when he was an undergraduate and they agreed to show us around Zurich. First, we visited the church, Gross Munster. The Church had beautiful stained glass windows and also a crypt in the basement. We also went up to the towers and got a very nice view of Zurich and the river. Stained glass in Grossmunster. *

Hi Alls,If any of you readers are familiar with A Certain Scientific Analysis from MIThttps://anime.scripts.mit.edu/miteiru/a-certain-scientific-analysis/you’ll know about Misaka’s railgun and the realistic numbers that go into analyzing it. If you’re unfamiliar, I highly recommend reading it. It’s quite an interesting read even for people who don’t follow Anime so much.

This morning, we decided to satisfy our craving for sweets by searching for a bakery. When we were walking around in old town Lugano, I spotted a cool looking bakery with delicious and beautiful looking cakes and pastries on display in its window. We decided to go in and investigate. We ordered a slice of plum pie and a slice of cake with walnut and chocolate strings on top. We sat in the cafe restaurant and savoured each delicious bite. The fancy confectionary that we had serindipitously stopped by for a breakfast of cake was actually a very special bakery renowed also for its espressos and apparently used to be a nunnery.

Hey guys, Long time no…blog? It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks, but I have some exciting stories to tell you all. This term is looking fairly packed for me: I’m taking 52 units and auditing a 6 unit class, TA-ing an introductory biology class and working on a number of extracurriculars. My title must seem weirder than usual, huh? It’s every bit as fantastical as it sounds! For the class that I’m TAing, students are required to think of new questions or experiments to design. This class is required for non-biology majors, so they’re also encouraged to combine background from their fields with what we’re learning in class. I’ve heard of some pretty cool ideas, including dolphins with guns and humans that change color! Other ideas were simulating a HIV virus, and building a robot that could “feel” fear! TA-ing is a challenge, but it also forces me to think about the big picture about many topics that I’ve spent many classes about learning the nitty gritty details. Last Friday, a friend and I went out to watch Demetri Martin perform!

We took the advice of one of the girls we had met in our hostel and went to Morecote the next day. We got lost on the way while we were looking for our bus stop and ended up in a small neighborhood in Paradiso for an hour. We walked through narrow alleys between pastel colored houses. It seemed like a nice place to live.

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Only at a place like Caltech. Only at a place like Caltech can you run into an international academic celebrity like Stephen Hawking in the bookstore. And sometimes you just have to seize an opportunity when it appears - even if you start shaking when you walk up because you’re seeing one of your idols in real life for the first time.

This morning, we went to the local street market near our hostel to buy local authentic artisan cheese and bread. Needless to say, both were was super delicious and made for a hearty breakfast. The bread was freshly baked and had a lot of different types of nuts including macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, etc.

Hi alls,Now you’re on your merry way perusing through the lands battling monsters, rescuing damsels, and most importantly leveling up, and that’s all good. But then you realize, you’re really slow! Certainly, people have told you the entirety of Caltech fantasy-scape could be traversed in 7mins, and it’s probably true if by 7 they meant 15mins. Which is mildy worse but wouldn’t be a problem if only the Magic trainer and Swordwork trainer didn’t have their lessons back to back on opposite sides of the map. (Braun gym is on the South West side of campus while Annenberg building is on the North East.) So you decide it’s a worthy investment to get a horse (bicycle). Unfortunately, there are thieves prowling about, exiles from other worlds, waiting to get the chance to steal your horse. So it’s a natural idea to get safety in the form of a U-lock. This U-lock is about the size of a door and goes around your horse to keep it safely secured in a stable (bike rack). But sadly, the thieves are wily and have developed a method of splicing animals together. They no longer need your entire horse and are simply content to steal it’s back legs which are then kept in storage until next needed. Just a warning that although the honorcode makes sure no Caltech member will take unfair advantage of another, people from off campus do frequently steal bikes, occasionally taking them apart and stealing just wheels. Curiously, the back wheel of my bike, and the front wheel of someone else with a very similar looking bike were stolen. Mystery Nut X now has a full set of wheels…So careful where you park.

We decided to take the scenic route to Lugano, the next city we were staying in. First, we took a train to Luzerne. We had an hour to kill before our boat ride across the lake, so we stopped by a modern art museum e that had some weird exhibits and some really weird exhibits. There were a few that we just thought were stupid, but a few were pretty cool. One we really liked was a room with two guys continuously painting the walls. One painting them white, the other painting them black.

We had one free day in San Jose, so we decided to leave the city and head to the most visited national park in Costa Rica, Poas Volcano.

This morning, we planned to take the train to Bern, the capital of Switzerland, this day, but since all shops and restaurants are closed on Sundays, we were in no hurry to leave Lauterbrunnen. We decided to hike to Staubbachfall, which is the waterfall above the town. At night, the waterfall is light from behind so the cascading water is visible. Thus, Staubbachfall is actually more visible at night than during the day becuase the mist from the waterfall is also light up at night. Stuabbachfall is a 297m high single drop waterfall. Apparently, the frirst measurement of Staubbach Waterfall was carried out in July 1776 by a geometrist Johann Samuel Wyttenback. He used a team of helpers with rope and after ascending the mountain to the top of the waterfall, he tried to let the rope down. However, he had underestimated the height of the waterfall and so the villagers had to collect pieces of rope and knot them together in order for the length of the rope to be measured.

To practice our Spanish and experience local culture, we stayed in host families in Cedros. I stayed in a host family with Meghana, an awesome frosh on the Y trip.

At an academically oriented university such as Caltech, we probably spend more time with schoolwork here than at other places. But this is not to say that it’s all we do. Roughly one-fourth of Caltech undergrads participate in an intercollegiate sport, and I plan on playing soccer and tennis all four years. With tennis in season, a typical day for me still looks similar to one of a typical Caltech student. If I wakeup early enough, I’ll grab some breakfast from open kitchen before class. The kitchens are open to get food 7-11am, then 3-7pm. My favorite part about it is the berries. Everyday they provide blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries, and I love berries! There is also a toast/bagel station with jars of different spreads, juice, milk, Chobani yogurt, and other fruit like bananas. So anyways, depending on the day, I’ll have one or two classes starting at 10am. In high school, ten seemed super late because we would have already had three classes by then. But it’s a lot different now.

Of course, our alternative spring break trip would not have been complete without our service project. Our volunteer project was at Hogar Crea Damas, a rehabilitation program for women in Costa Rica. The program works with people coming from domestic violence situations, drug additions, and a variety of other histories, and attempts to help them reshape their lives. Hogar Crea has homes around Costa Rica. We worked at the one in Tres Rios, a small mountain town half an hour from San Jose.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve accumulated a couple of photos on my phone from a range of events. And here they are! Every term each house has formal dinner. It’s like a house dinner, but we typicallydress up and the food is much better than that from usual dinner.

Today I enjoyed the products of yesterday’s labor! I introduce:

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After a long flight, we’re finally in Costa Rica!!!

For the first part of spring break, I went on an ASB trip to Yosemite with a bunch of Techers (undergrad and grad). We did a bunch of out-door community service and hiked around various trails in Yosemite. It was wonderful. We were the first group for the 2013 season (it’s winter until end of March), so we got to start off by cleaning the campsites before it opened. This meant going around and picking up bits of trash, brushing the picnic tables and metal food containers of any dust and leaves. We picked up trash for the first and third day of our stay there, and we picked up so much trash! Now, there were occasional plates, spoons, sandals, and plastic bags. But kinds of trash I picked up the most were cigarette buds, pieces of foil, Capri Sun straws, bottle caps, and the bread-bag ties. Little things we might drop while munching on our sandwich or stuff we fail to pick up when the wind blows over the picnic table. But these pieces of trash not only make these common areas look dirty, animals eat them as well! That was so saddening! If we were not to be extra cautious, we could be littering and increasing the chances of putting jagged pieces of foil inside the stomachs of these animals! Second day was a bit more different than our first or last day of community service. We were relocating chopped up lumber from one site to the other. It was hard work, but with successful team work, we prevailed! Apparently, the park service uses trees that needs to be discarded (whether it be trees that needed to be removed, etc.) and provides them to their volunteers for firewood. Now, I thought that was a very odd thing to do, until the volunteer coordinator explained to us that they want to discourage people from bringing in trees far away from Yosemite to ensure non-native fungi will not be introduced to the forest! I learned and experienced so many things on this trip. It definitely made my spring break fantastically exciting. Yosemite was simply breathtaking. I do think I will definitely come back sometime in the future. There were beautiful waterfalls, great trails, great views, and cute animals. Seeing this entire amazing wilderness with people and cars coming back and forth, I feel recharged to start my next (and last!) term at Tech. I don’t know how, but I would definitely love to help find ways to help the environment (I’m thinking alternative energy, etc.). Though for now, I’m going to stick to what I know: saving electricity, water, and recycling plastic/glass.

Hi all! My name’s Rachel, and I’m a sophomore in Electrical Engineering here at Caltech. Throughout the course of this blog, I hope to share with you a few of my experiences here.

Hola! I’m Katja, a junior chem major.

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It’s been a while since I last blogged, and it feels good to be back! First off, I’d like to congratulate the regular decision admitted students. If admissions accepts you, that means you can handle the workload. So don’t worry about it! I was intimidated by the academic rigor of this school before I came as well. Hopefully you all come to PFW; it’s a ton of fun!

So, it turns out my friends are pretty talented. I mean, everyone here is pretty talented. But, some of my friends (and some awesome other students, Caltech and JPL employees, and other community members) are really talented in the acting/singing/dancing department. Last weekend, I went to go see Caltech’s (EXPLICIT)’s spring musical, Little Shop of Horrors. Every year, they put on one play and one musical, and anyone in the Caltech community, including students, JPL employees, and professors, can audition and be a part of one of the productions. This year’s production of LIttle Shop of Horrors featured my friend (who went on Birthright with me!) Jeff Sherman as Seymour, the lead. Holly, a JPL employee played Audrey, and Alex Jose (also on the Birthright trip) was Orrin, the Dentist.