...my life isn't exciting enough apparently.
No, that's not true, its just not exciting in all the right places. A lot has been happening with clinic and projects and whatnot, its just nothing anyone but me is excited about.
So whats new? Hmm...and of general interest... well I think I've decided I'm not going to apply for grad schools for next year. By 'decided' I mean I kept pushing it off again and again until it was about that time where I figured it was kind of late to try to get letters of reccomendation...the apps for some schools are due in the next week. I figure though, this is probably best for me. I don't have a specific area of research I'd like to go into in grad school, my entire motivation so far has been the desire to take more specialized engineering classes (because engineering classes abroad sucked...). So my plan now is to go work in industry for a couple years, see what I like, and then I can go to grad school in a couple years. I definitely want to go to grad school at some point...I'll be very disappointed in myself if I let the opportunity pass me by.
Man, next semester is gonna suck... I'm going to have so much work to do... mostly because of clinic...arg clinic, the bane of every engineer's existence. How can it be so much work, and yet so enjoyable at the same time. My team gets to fly R/C planes!!
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Baaaaahhhh school
Man, this has been a difficult week. 3 out of the past 5 days I've been down in academics pushing 2-3 AM working on stuff. First it was clinic, trying to attach the cart carrying the transmitter to the motorized belt - that failed spectacularly. Turns out the metal epoxy i was using didnt stick to the aluminum all that well, and with a little downforce from the belt its in two pieces again...We have some new ideas though on how to resolve that, so I'm sure i can get something that works. My main concern is that the motor only has ~60 oz-in of torque, and there's quite a bit of resistance in the belt assembly already. I have to be careful attaching the cart, if its not attached juuuuuuust right, there's even greater resistance, and it doesnt look like the motor can pull that....
Good news though (sorta...ok, actually not good news at all), it doesn't look like our transmitters and/or receiver are working properly, so we had to ship them back to TREX... won't be able to do any testing for at least a week, giving me time to get a good solution for the cart together.
Other than clinic, the lab for 85 has been particularly nasty, thats the reason for the last 2 nights of 3 am down in academics. Yeaa.... its not due till monday, but I'm going to the Getty this friday, then to Caltech on saturday for a TBP conference all day, so I'm working ahead.
Don't even get me started on my Hum classes....out of ~8 books combined we've read this semester so far, I've personally read just 1 - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and that's only 50 pages long. I have no time! Lucky for me, I'm proficient in BS, and I've actually gotten decent grades so far.
I should not have had those 2 cups of coffee....its past 4 am and im not really tired.... BAHHH
Good news though (sorta...ok, actually not good news at all), it doesn't look like our transmitters and/or receiver are working properly, so we had to ship them back to TREX... won't be able to do any testing for at least a week, giving me time to get a good solution for the cart together.
Other than clinic, the lab for 85 has been particularly nasty, thats the reason for the last 2 nights of 3 am down in academics. Yeaa.... its not due till monday, but I'm going to the Getty this friday, then to Caltech on saturday for a TBP conference all day, so I'm working ahead.
Don't even get me started on my Hum classes....out of ~8 books combined we've read this semester so far, I've personally read just 1 - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and that's only 50 pages long. I have no time! Lucky for me, I'm proficient in BS, and I've actually gotten decent grades so far.
I should not have had those 2 cups of coffee....its past 4 am and im not really tired.... BAHHH
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Top of the South Island!
Yay! I'm done with school and now I'm all set to go on an awesome trip up to the North Island! My last two finals....ehhh... not the best. I'm fairly certain I passed all of them, but the real question is whether I got a B or better in Heat & Mass Transfer, because I need that to get Mudd credit.... and that final (80% of the final mark!!) was not a fun exam. I'm just hoping everyone else did poorly too, and brings the curve down. Yay.
But enough of that, now its on to fun vacation! The day after my last final, Erin and I woke up at the crack of dawn to get down to the train station. I nearly missed it too, we had to catch the first Orbiter bus of the day to make it to the station on time, so I went out to the bus stop a couple minutes before the timetable said the bus would come through, but it was early! It turned down the road running past my flat, so I was at least able to wave him down, and he was nice so he let me get on.
From the train station, we rode the TranzCoastal train up from Christchurch along the coast, past Kaikoura up to Blenheim. The ride was pretty cool, although nothing spectacular. They did have one train car that you could walk out too that was open to the air, so that was pretty cool to stand out there and watch. So we got to Blenheim, a small, rather boring little town with 30 min or so until the Intercity bus came that would take us along the northern edge of the South Island to Nelson. It was about lunch time, so we walked across the street to a BP and got some lunch. I picked up a bacon and egg pie. For those of you that don't know, New Zealand has a very interesting type of fast food called a meat pie. It is just what it sounds like, a small (5-7 cm diameter) pie crust filled with a type of meat (like steak, or mince AKA ground meat). It can be tasty at some times, but like all fast food, too much and it gets kinda nasty.
So the Intercity bus to Nelson came, and we took off. The bus driver told a little bit about some of the things in the region. We arrived in Nelson about 2 in the afternoon and took a walk through town to our hostel on Trafalgar Square. Turned out in the middle of Trafalgar Square was a large cathedral on top of a hill, ironically called Christ Church Cathedral. After we had settled in a little bit we took a walk through the city to see what else was around, and walked around the Cathedral and took some pictures up there too. That night we made dinner (only time so far actually...), then took some time to read before going to bed. Its turned out to be a pretty good trip for doing reading. If i avoid the TV and the computer, turns out I have a lot of time to read!
The next morning we woke up waaaaaaaayyy too early to meet an Abel Tasman Coachlines bus out by our hostel at 6 AM. After some loops around the city picking up people at other hostels and places, we were on our way around the Tasman Bay to Abel Tasman National Park! It was interesting to see the effect of the tides, the combination of very level ground and a tide of 3-4 meters makes for a really big, impressive estuary. At low tide, there was hundreds of meters of exposed land with maybe millimetres of water extending out into the bay. The driver pointed out how on that land, people had gone out at low tide and left messages made with rocks. These messages would be covered up with the tide, only visible at low tide.
We made it out at last to Motueka, the last reasonably-sized town before the national park. We did sea kayaking with a company based there. We had originally booked a trip where we paddled out from Marahau to Anchorage, then take a water taxi back, but we were the only people booked on that trip, so they bumped us up to a bigger trip, that took us to Anchorage by water taxi, then we paddled up further to Onetahuti Beach, to take another water taxi ride back to Marahau. It was quite an exciting trip, I don't think I've ever been sea kayaking before. It was the whole deal with neoprene skirts that we had to wear that went over the hole for the seat. Since they were sea kayaks, they were pretty large and were fitted with a rudder I controlled from the rear seat. At one point we paddled into a river inlet that was only available at high tide, and went up the river a bit to see a swingbridge that was part of the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk. We stopped for lunch at Bark Bay and enjoyed some beautiful weather out in the sun. After a little while hanging out there and eating cake the guides brought, we got all set in the kayaks again and went up toward Onetahuti beach, going around Tonga Island and its seal colony on the way. On the way from Tonga Island to the final beach, it got to be a little less fun because the wind started picking up and making a rough sea. Erin and I made it to the beach a pretty long way ahead of everyone else, I'm sure because we were ready to get out of those waves. It was a good trip though, must have been about 6 hrs of paddling total. We're gonna get buff from all this exercise we're doing!
When we got back to Nelson that night, we were both exhausted and didn't want to cook dinner, so we walked down to Little India and got some delicious Indian food for takeaway. Someone has to let me know if there are any good Indian food places around back home, because thats one thing they have a LOT of everywhere in New Zealand. After dinner I watched this British show on this short guy (~5 ft) trying to deal with life as a short person, and talking with other short people having difficulties. It was pretty funny, even if some of it was a little ridiculous. So in one part, he's saying that he has trouble sometimes using a urinal. He goes to talk to a guy in the urinal business, who then goes on to describe a design for a urinal that uses an infrared beam to sense height, and a movable urinal to adjust to the necessary height for the user....OR.... put the urinal lower on the wall. Which sounds like the more reasonable solution to you?
Thursday was a day mostly of traveling. We woke up early (again!) to catch the Intercity bus to Picton, north of Blenheim. In Picton, we had about 2 hrs free until the ferry left, so we wandered around a little bit, and stopped for brunch at the Dutch Bakkerij. Highly rated!! Great sandwiches and awesome desserts too. Then in the early afternoon we got on the Interislander ferry that took us from Picton, through Queen Charlotte Sound, across the Cook Strait, then up into Wellington! Yay, I'm in the North Island, and not just in Auckland Airport waiting for my connecting flight!
But enough of that, now its on to fun vacation! The day after my last final, Erin and I woke up at the crack of dawn to get down to the train station. I nearly missed it too, we had to catch the first Orbiter bus of the day to make it to the station on time, so I went out to the bus stop a couple minutes before the timetable said the bus would come through, but it was early! It turned down the road running past my flat, so I was at least able to wave him down, and he was nice so he let me get on.
From the train station, we rode the TranzCoastal train up from Christchurch along the coast, past Kaikoura up to Blenheim. The ride was pretty cool, although nothing spectacular. They did have one train car that you could walk out too that was open to the air, so that was pretty cool to stand out there and watch. So we got to Blenheim, a small, rather boring little town with 30 min or so until the Intercity bus came that would take us along the northern edge of the South Island to Nelson. It was about lunch time, so we walked across the street to a BP and got some lunch. I picked up a bacon and egg pie. For those of you that don't know, New Zealand has a very interesting type of fast food called a meat pie. It is just what it sounds like, a small (5-7 cm diameter) pie crust filled with a type of meat (like steak, or mince AKA ground meat). It can be tasty at some times, but like all fast food, too much and it gets kinda nasty.
So the Intercity bus to Nelson came, and we took off. The bus driver told a little bit about some of the things in the region. We arrived in Nelson about 2 in the afternoon and took a walk through town to our hostel on Trafalgar Square. Turned out in the middle of Trafalgar Square was a large cathedral on top of a hill, ironically called Christ Church Cathedral. After we had settled in a little bit we took a walk through the city to see what else was around, and walked around the Cathedral and took some pictures up there too. That night we made dinner (only time so far actually...), then took some time to read before going to bed. Its turned out to be a pretty good trip for doing reading. If i avoid the TV and the computer, turns out I have a lot of time to read!
The next morning we woke up waaaaaaaayyy too early to meet an Abel Tasman Coachlines bus out by our hostel at 6 AM. After some loops around the city picking up people at other hostels and places, we were on our way around the Tasman Bay to Abel Tasman National Park! It was interesting to see the effect of the tides, the combination of very level ground and a tide of 3-4 meters makes for a really big, impressive estuary. At low tide, there was hundreds of meters of exposed land with maybe millimetres of water extending out into the bay. The driver pointed out how on that land, people had gone out at low tide and left messages made with rocks. These messages would be covered up with the tide, only visible at low tide.
We made it out at last to Motueka, the last reasonably-sized town before the national park. We did sea kayaking with a company based there. We had originally booked a trip where we paddled out from Marahau to Anchorage, then take a water taxi back, but we were the only people booked on that trip, so they bumped us up to a bigger trip, that took us to Anchorage by water taxi, then we paddled up further to Onetahuti Beach, to take another water taxi ride back to Marahau. It was quite an exciting trip, I don't think I've ever been sea kayaking before. It was the whole deal with neoprene skirts that we had to wear that went over the hole for the seat. Since they were sea kayaks, they were pretty large and were fitted with a rudder I controlled from the rear seat. At one point we paddled into a river inlet that was only available at high tide, and went up the river a bit to see a swingbridge that was part of the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk. We stopped for lunch at Bark Bay and enjoyed some beautiful weather out in the sun. After a little while hanging out there and eating cake the guides brought, we got all set in the kayaks again and went up toward Onetahuti beach, going around Tonga Island and its seal colony on the way. On the way from Tonga Island to the final beach, it got to be a little less fun because the wind started picking up and making a rough sea. Erin and I made it to the beach a pretty long way ahead of everyone else, I'm sure because we were ready to get out of those waves. It was a good trip though, must have been about 6 hrs of paddling total. We're gonna get buff from all this exercise we're doing!
When we got back to Nelson that night, we were both exhausted and didn't want to cook dinner, so we walked down to Little India and got some delicious Indian food for takeaway. Someone has to let me know if there are any good Indian food places around back home, because thats one thing they have a LOT of everywhere in New Zealand. After dinner I watched this British show on this short guy (~5 ft) trying to deal with life as a short person, and talking with other short people having difficulties. It was pretty funny, even if some of it was a little ridiculous. So in one part, he's saying that he has trouble sometimes using a urinal. He goes to talk to a guy in the urinal business, who then goes on to describe a design for a urinal that uses an infrared beam to sense height, and a movable urinal to adjust to the necessary height for the user....OR.... put the urinal lower on the wall. Which sounds like the more reasonable solution to you?
Thursday was a day mostly of traveling. We woke up early (again!) to catch the Intercity bus to Picton, north of Blenheim. In Picton, we had about 2 hrs free until the ferry left, so we wandered around a little bit, and stopped for brunch at the Dutch Bakkerij. Highly rated!! Great sandwiches and awesome desserts too. Then in the early afternoon we got on the Interislander ferry that took us from Picton, through Queen Charlotte Sound, across the Cook Strait, then up into Wellington! Yay, I'm in the North Island, and not just in Auckland Airport waiting for my connecting flight!
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Mid-Semester New Zealand Update!
I'm now halfway through my classes at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand!! Thats right, and most of you haven't even started school yet! So this past term has gone pretty well, school here is so different from universities in the States, and its very different than Mudd. Most of you guys know (already being students there), that all of our time at Mudd is spent doing endless, multi-hour assignments and labs so long it makes you want to tear your eyes out. Here, I'm actually kind of bored a lot of the time. Here's a rundown of what I've done this term for school:
-Roman Mythologies: go to class, read ancient texts (sometimes), and just this week I turned in a short-answer test talking about how the mythology of the founding of Rome is important culturally to Romans because it connects the founding of their city, and the first line of kings, to the gods and also to the hero Aeneas (who was a big player in that Trojan War you hear so much about). So overall, not much to that class so far.
-New Zealand History: go to class, read stuff for the tutorial classes, discuss NZ history. I wrote a short paper summarizing the life of this NZ family affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam, and then led a discussion in class about the text giving this history. Then I had an essay due this past week that I ingeniously decided to write the night before, ending at 4 AM. It was interesting though, and I think I wrote a pretty good paper. It was about New Zealand's contribution to the armed forces in the Vietnam war, and to what extent their military commitments during that time period were influenced by their various alliances (ANZUS, SEATO, etc). Interesting to see from the other side the perspective of a country that contributes a token force, that I usually look at as kind of silly. It's relevant today as well, with the desires for mulitlateralism in Afghanistan and Iraq though most of the non-US contributions are somewhere between 10-200 people (that could even be non-combat). Interesting also how much historical events in the US affected NZ. For instance, the local Women's Rights movements and Maori Sovereignty movements were directly caused by the Women's rights movements in the US. And man, New Zealanders get crazy with their sports, particularly rugby. The greatest period of social unrest & protest in New Zealand was during the Springbok tours, which was when the South African rugby team came to New Zealand to play in several matches. Many NZers strongly opposed the apartheid in S. Africa, and began to protest heavily. One of the more turbulent times, but I think its funny comparing it to periods of social unrest in the States. The LA riots following the Rodney King event comes to mind. It never got anywhere near that bad in NZ. That's a good class. There's a good balance of Kiwi and American students, so there are some good discussions comparing various events and movements in each.
-Heat and Mass transfer: Well I haven't done anything for this besides go to class so far, but there's a hw due in 2 weeks. Its fairly intimidating that each of 4 hw assignments is 5% of the total mark each, leaving the remaining 80% for the final. Fuuuuuuuun. No pressure at all. Yea, so I have to get a B or mudd doesnt give me credit, but I'm not sweating it.
-Fluid Mechanics: I've done a little more for this class. Besides lecture/notes, there's been one test so far. Now that was a fairly traumatic experience. Not the test itself, the test was the easiest thing I've had to do since entering Mudd. I am not joking about that, it was ridiculously easy. The bad part was trying to find the damn room it was in. Since the class was all 2nd year students, the prof was ok with saying the test was in the "engineering drafting room", and apparently everyone else had some experience there, and were ok. Me, being probably the only American in the class, was completely dumbfounded. I ended up asking a couple people and just managing to get into the room less than a minute before the test started. Other than that test, there's been 3 labs for fluid mech. Those have actually been pretty interesting, plus very simple. I mean, after E80, I had gotten used to being given thousands of dollars of equipment, a vague idea of what to do, and a "have at it!" The first lab I had here, They first gave us a rundown of the theory, the equations and all that. Then we collected data (in groups of 7 or so, to record all of 6 different recordings, two of which (room temp and pressure) didnt change. Then, we actually did sample calculations in the room, and the lab person checked to make sure we all knew how to do it. And then, we were told that there was an Excel spreadsheet available that we could put our data into, and it would calculate everything. It was that easy. Frankly, I was kind of bored, so I went and made my own excel sheet, which I'm sure was better too. So I have to thank E80 for making us work harder than we ever have before, no lab can ever intimidate me now.
So classes - easy. My only problem with them is that I get lazy, and then I procrastinate, and then I stay up till 4 am doing an essay.
Other than classes, I have to report that I haven't really been busy with much of anything else. I have a lot of free time, but its mostly broken up into chunks during the week, so I don't have a ton of contiguous free time where I can go on trips. I have been able to do a couple things with some of the other Americans in my study abroad group. One of the first weekends we rode the bus across the city out to the beach (yep, the same Pacific Ocean that touches land back home) at New Brighton. We went out along the beach and the pier for a little while, and got some food in town. I'm looking to get back out there later on as it warms up to actually go into the ocean (and maybe do some surfing). I've seen 4 movies since I've been here. The first one was the new Harry Potter movie right when it came out. With all the excitement about the last book coming out, they wanted to go watch the movie. And yes, I did read the last book. It was pretty good, although I don't know if I really like the ending all that much (just the last chapter).
I also went to see the Simpsons movie with my friend Erin and her flatmates. Another weekend I saw License to Wed with some of the girls from IES, plus Thai food (there are a lot of Asian food places here - particularly good Thai and Indian places, so I've been enjoying those. What I really miss though is good Mexican food. They have one overpriced, semi-fancy Mexican cafe, but I really miss that part of Southern California. So many places to get good Mexican food. There's actually one place out near school that the Chem dept took Glennis and I to for being such great preceptors that had authentic Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and Mexican food. For the longest time, we couldn't remember where it was, or what it was called, but I got really hungry for it one day here, and I looked it up and found it! Guasalmex, in Pomona. When I get back to school, you're all coming with me there.
Wow, this is a long tangent, back to the main story about movies). That same weekend, the New Zealand Film Festival was in Christchurch, so Erin and I went downtown and saw the movie Rescue Dawn, about a Vietnam war fighter pilot who gets shot down over Laos and taken prisoner. It's pretty intense, but I really suggest it to anyone who likes the War genre and a good POW story.
On a thursday night a couple weeks back, we went with the whole IES group to Tamaki Heritage Village, which was a reenactment of a small part of Maori history during the Musket wars. It was very well done. We first went into a mock Maori village that had several actors walking around, and several different huts that we could go in and learn about a different part of Maori life, such as about food, about herbal medicines, and weapons. Then a rival Maori tribe rode into the village and began to attack. They did very well making us feel involved, as a part in the story. We watched a reenactment of the battle played out on a large field outside the village. Then we rode an old-fashioned train to another part of the park that had a mock-up of an old NZ city. There we learned about Maori and their confrontations with the Europeans moving in and displacing them from their land, and the influence of Christianity. It was really cool because they had Maori and European actors spread out across the town, interspersed in the group, and they would talk in character, and make comments at the Europeans. It was all very cool. One of the Maori came up to a guy in our group, Mark, and offered to trade him a musket. Mark offered this blanket that they gave each of us (it was a little chilly outside) plus this girl Sara in exchange for the musket, but he was turned down... After traveling through the town, they took us to a banquet hall where they danced and sang for us, and then we ate a hangi, which is a traditional Maori meal for special occasions cooked underground. One of the things I'm looking forward to later this semester is that my tutorial prof for NZ history is Maori, and later on next month he has offered to bring our tutorial group back to his house for a hangi... I'm really looking forward to it.
Another weekend me and a couple other people from the IES group went to the Orana wildlife park to see some animals. The best parts were the animal feeding times. We got to hand feed giraffes, and watch tigers get fed.
Last week my flatmates and I went out to get dessert at this place called Strawberry Fare in the city. They had some amazingly good desserts. We were joking at the end that we wanted to get more, but they were so rich that by the time i was finishing up my Devil's Dream, I didn't think I could eat anymore. When we got back to the flat we spent the rest of the night on David's PS3, playing some fighting game...I forget what it was called, maybe Tekken? Well anyways, we played so many times, I was getting pretty good towards the end. I was getting tired though, so i started to lose, so i headed to bed.
So thats been all the main events so far this semester. The rest of the time, if I'm not doing work or eating, I'm usually found on the computer or hanging out with flatmates, or on occasion going out. These next two weeks though are gonna be the exciting ones. Boy, we've got big plans.
Spring break here is 2 weeks long, beginning this weekend. Starting this saturday, Erin and I are renting a car to drive up to Kaikoura on the coast. Kaikoura is mostly famous for whale and dolphin tours, but we're also looking at tramping (hiking) along somewhere. We've heard there is a really nice hike that goes along the coast around the peninsula. There's also a winery south of the city overlooking the ocean, we'll probably go take a tour and go wine tasting. There's a variety of things to do there, we haven't made any definite plans yet. Then at some point we're gonna drive south and inland to Hanmer Springs. They have (obviously) hot springs there, but also tramping, horseback riding, and other things. We haven't made any plans besides renting the car, so its going to be a very spontaneous trip, and a lot of fun! We'll get back by thursday morning, because friday evening we'll be heading to the Christchurch Int'l Airport, and boarding an Airbus A320 to head to Rarotonga, the capitol centre of the Cook Islands!!! Thats right, I get to go to a South Pacific island the same week you guys start school! (except Shannon I know, shes already into classes like me). There's not a lot planned out for us, so we have a lot of free time to just hang out or go down to the beach and just chill. Its gonna be beautiful down there, and I'm not gonna want to come back and go back to class...
I'll send out another email when I get back from Spring Break, and I'll tell you guys all about Kaikoura, Hanmer Springs, and Rarotonga. Hope you guys had a great summer, school's starting again! Good luck this semester, And I'll see you guys (except Judy! Have fun in Ireland!!) when I get back sometime either late Nov or early Dec.
-Roman Mythologies: go to class, read ancient texts (sometimes), and just this week I turned in a short-answer test talking about how the mythology of the founding of Rome is important culturally to Romans because it connects the founding of their city, and the first line of kings, to the gods and also to the hero Aeneas (who was a big player in that Trojan War you hear so much about). So overall, not much to that class so far.
-New Zealand History: go to class, read stuff for the tutorial classes, discuss NZ history. I wrote a short paper summarizing the life of this NZ family affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam, and then led a discussion in class about the text giving this history. Then I had an essay due this past week that I ingeniously decided to write the night before, ending at 4 AM. It was interesting though, and I think I wrote a pretty good paper. It was about New Zealand's contribution to the armed forces in the Vietnam war, and to what extent their military commitments during that time period were influenced by their various alliances (ANZUS, SEATO, etc). Interesting to see from the other side the perspective of a country that contributes a token force, that I usually look at as kind of silly. It's relevant today as well, with the desires for mulitlateralism in Afghanistan and Iraq though most of the non-US contributions are somewhere between 10-200 people (that could even be non-combat). Interesting also how much historical events in the US affected NZ. For instance, the local Women's Rights movements and Maori Sovereignty movements were directly caused by the Women's rights movements in the US. And man, New Zealanders get crazy with their sports, particularly rugby. The greatest period of social unrest & protest in New Zealand was during the Springbok tours, which was when the South African rugby team came to New Zealand to play in several matches. Many NZers strongly opposed the apartheid in S. Africa, and began to protest heavily. One of the more turbulent times, but I think its funny comparing it to periods of social unrest in the States. The LA riots following the Rodney King event comes to mind. It never got anywhere near that bad in NZ. That's a good class. There's a good balance of Kiwi and American students, so there are some good discussions comparing various events and movements in each.
-Heat and Mass transfer: Well I haven't done anything for this besides go to class so far, but there's a hw due in 2 weeks. Its fairly intimidating that each of 4 hw assignments is 5% of the total mark each, leaving the remaining 80% for the final. Fuuuuuuuun. No pressure at all. Yea, so I have to get a B or mudd doesnt give me credit, but I'm not sweating it.
-Fluid Mechanics: I've done a little more for this class. Besides lecture/notes, there's been one test so far. Now that was a fairly traumatic experience. Not the test itself, the test was the easiest thing I've had to do since entering Mudd. I am not joking about that, it was ridiculously easy. The bad part was trying to find the damn room it was in. Since the class was all 2nd year students, the prof was ok with saying the test was in the "engineering drafting room", and apparently everyone else had some experience there, and were ok. Me, being probably the only American in the class, was completely dumbfounded. I ended up asking a couple people and just managing to get into the room less than a minute before the test started. Other than that test, there's been 3 labs for fluid mech. Those have actually been pretty interesting, plus very simple. I mean, after E80, I had gotten used to being given thousands of dollars of equipment, a vague idea of what to do, and a "have at it!" The first lab I had here, They first gave us a rundown of the theory, the equations and all that. Then we collected data (in groups of 7 or so, to record all of 6 different recordings, two of which (room temp and pressure) didnt change. Then, we actually did sample calculations in the room, and the lab person checked to make sure we all knew how to do it. And then, we were told that there was an Excel spreadsheet available that we could put our data into, and it would calculate everything. It was that easy. Frankly, I was kind of bored, so I went and made my own excel sheet, which I'm sure was better too. So I have to thank E80 for making us work harder than we ever have before, no lab can ever intimidate me now.
So classes - easy. My only problem with them is that I get lazy, and then I procrastinate, and then I stay up till 4 am doing an essay.
Other than classes, I have to report that I haven't really been busy with much of anything else. I have a lot of free time, but its mostly broken up into chunks during the week, so I don't have a ton of contiguous free time where I can go on trips. I have been able to do a couple things with some of the other Americans in my study abroad group. One of the first weekends we rode the bus across the city out to the beach (yep, the same Pacific Ocean that touches land back home) at New Brighton. We went out along the beach and the pier for a little while, and got some food in town. I'm looking to get back out there later on as it warms up to actually go into the ocean (and maybe do some surfing). I've seen 4 movies since I've been here. The first one was the new Harry Potter movie right when it came out. With all the excitement about the last book coming out, they wanted to go watch the movie. And yes, I did read the last book. It was pretty good, although I don't know if I really like the ending all that much (just the last chapter).
I also went to see the Simpsons movie with my friend Erin and her flatmates. Another weekend I saw License to Wed with some of the girls from IES, plus Thai food (there are a lot of Asian food places here - particularly good Thai and Indian places, so I've been enjoying those. What I really miss though is good Mexican food. They have one overpriced, semi-fancy Mexican cafe, but I really miss that part of Southern California. So many places to get good Mexican food. There's actually one place out near school that the Chem dept took Glennis and I to for being such great preceptors that had authentic Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and Mexican food. For the longest time, we couldn't remember where it was, or what it was called, but I got really hungry for it one day here, and I looked it up and found it! Guasalmex, in Pomona. When I get back to school, you're all coming with me there.
Wow, this is a long tangent, back to the main story about movies). That same weekend, the New Zealand Film Festival was in Christchurch, so Erin and I went downtown and saw the movie Rescue Dawn, about a Vietnam war fighter pilot who gets shot down over Laos and taken prisoner. It's pretty intense, but I really suggest it to anyone who likes the War genre and a good POW story.
On a thursday night a couple weeks back, we went with the whole IES group to Tamaki Heritage Village, which was a reenactment of a small part of Maori history during the Musket wars. It was very well done. We first went into a mock Maori village that had several actors walking around, and several different huts that we could go in and learn about a different part of Maori life, such as about food, about herbal medicines, and weapons. Then a rival Maori tribe rode into the village and began to attack. They did very well making us feel involved, as a part in the story. We watched a reenactment of the battle played out on a large field outside the village. Then we rode an old-fashioned train to another part of the park that had a mock-up of an old NZ city. There we learned about Maori and their confrontations with the Europeans moving in and displacing them from their land, and the influence of Christianity. It was really cool because they had Maori and European actors spread out across the town, interspersed in the group, and they would talk in character, and make comments at the Europeans. It was all very cool. One of the Maori came up to a guy in our group, Mark, and offered to trade him a musket. Mark offered this blanket that they gave each of us (it was a little chilly outside) plus this girl Sara in exchange for the musket, but he was turned down... After traveling through the town, they took us to a banquet hall where they danced and sang for us, and then we ate a hangi, which is a traditional Maori meal for special occasions cooked underground. One of the things I'm looking forward to later this semester is that my tutorial prof for NZ history is Maori, and later on next month he has offered to bring our tutorial group back to his house for a hangi... I'm really looking forward to it.
Another weekend me and a couple other people from the IES group went to the Orana wildlife park to see some animals. The best parts were the animal feeding times. We got to hand feed giraffes, and watch tigers get fed.
Last week my flatmates and I went out to get dessert at this place called Strawberry Fare in the city. They had some amazingly good desserts. We were joking at the end that we wanted to get more, but they were so rich that by the time i was finishing up my Devil's Dream, I didn't think I could eat anymore. When we got back to the flat we spent the rest of the night on David's PS3, playing some fighting game...I forget what it was called, maybe Tekken? Well anyways, we played so many times, I was getting pretty good towards the end. I was getting tired though, so i started to lose, so i headed to bed.
So thats been all the main events so far this semester. The rest of the time, if I'm not doing work or eating, I'm usually found on the computer or hanging out with flatmates, or on occasion going out. These next two weeks though are gonna be the exciting ones. Boy, we've got big plans.
Spring break here is 2 weeks long, beginning this weekend. Starting this saturday, Erin and I are renting a car to drive up to Kaikoura on the coast. Kaikoura is mostly famous for whale and dolphin tours, but we're also looking at tramping (hiking) along somewhere. We've heard there is a really nice hike that goes along the coast around the peninsula. There's also a winery south of the city overlooking the ocean, we'll probably go take a tour and go wine tasting. There's a variety of things to do there, we haven't made any definite plans yet. Then at some point we're gonna drive south and inland to Hanmer Springs. They have (obviously) hot springs there, but also tramping, horseback riding, and other things. We haven't made any plans besides renting the car, so its going to be a very spontaneous trip, and a lot of fun! We'll get back by thursday morning, because friday evening we'll be heading to the Christchurch Int'l Airport, and boarding an Airbus A320 to head to Rarotonga, the capitol centre of the Cook Islands!!! Thats right, I get to go to a South Pacific island the same week you guys start school! (except Shannon I know, shes already into classes like me). There's not a lot planned out for us, so we have a lot of free time to just hang out or go down to the beach and just chill. Its gonna be beautiful down there, and I'm not gonna want to come back and go back to class...
I'll send out another email when I get back from Spring Break, and I'll tell you guys all about Kaikoura, Hanmer Springs, and Rarotonga. Hope you guys had a great summer, school's starting again! Good luck this semester, And I'll see you guys (except Judy! Have fun in Ireland!!) when I get back sometime either late Nov or early Dec.
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