I hope you had a great Fourth of July! Most of my friends hit the beach and went to watch fireworks. I ended up checking out Grand Park's block party, exploring Little Tokyo then having a BBQ.
Grand Park hosts a giant Fourth of July celebration every year. There are performances, food trucks, games, fireworks and lots of people. We took the Metro there since parking Downtown is an absolute pain in the butt. Even though we went right went the party began, we had to wait 20 minutes to get in.
I was slightly underwhelmed by the food options there since I don't exactly crave curry or loaded fries in 85 degree weather. Due to security, we weren't allowed to bring any liquids into Grand Park, so I got thirsty really quickly. I didn't feel like spending $9 on a bottle of homemade kombucha but I wanted to cool off, so we decided to walk over to Little Tokyo (7 minutes away by walk) and enjoy delicious ice cream.
My friend, a summer student, had soft serve at Honeymee. While I had a black sesame mochi ice cream from Mikawaya, the inventor of the mochi ice cream. The store front we visited was the original! It's slightly ironic, but there were more happy people in Little Tokyo's Village Plaza than at Grand Park (well fed people = happy people).
After we fueled up, we went back to campus for a BBQ collaboration between Lloyd and Venerable. We grilled burgers and hot dogs and chilled out with music all evening. The turnout was way greater than expected, and we ran out of food TWICE. Then people went their separate ways to watch fireworks.
Just last week, on an unassuming Thursday, the astro(physics) community got served two humongous cakes at once. Both the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) and the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (IceCube) have ground-breaking scientific findings to share with the class!
A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the mountains are beautiful, and mysterious sounds echo between our walls while we don’t even pretend to sleep.
This summer I had the incredible opportunity to do a 10-week internship at Gilead Sciences in Foster City, CA. For those unfamiliar, Gilead Sciences, Inc. is a research-based biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative medicines.
