trader joe's

my internship ended last week. below are uneventful pics from the 3-month long pool tournament. (my team lost to the winning team in the semi-finals. 28 teams total.)

(most of the teams)

today, i fell in love w/ trader joe's. it surely makes me feel like a californian everytime i walk into that strange, strange, hippie place. their prices are amazing. notably, the 'extra long spaghetti pasta' is longer than my legs and is 2 lbs worth

1st day of grad school - GO BRUINS!

preface:

• ucla has 28k ugrads, 11k grads (50% female)
• florida tech has 2k ugrads, 2k grads (25% who are technically female)

i took the free bus to school, just like in grade school. the girl who sat next to me went to mit for ugrad and coincidentally had heard of florida tech! turns out, 2 of the 4 of us FIT'ers here are in her program and she had met them. weird.

walking around campus was crazy. it was gigantic, and i've never seen as many model-looking ppl in my entire life. the sheer volume was crazy. just imagine: tons of college kids sprinkled all on nice green grass in front of old architectural buildings; a real football stadium; and tons of clubs and organizations doing shameless plugs within a condensed walkway.

i get to my first class--web information management--early, yet i barely got the last remaining seat. the course has a 25-person limit, and the old-school (literally) looking classroom had 30 seats. however, 50 people showed up. so, the 20 extra people just stood against the walls. having no idea what to expect, i start to glance around and realize i am pretty much the only white kid in the entire class. nearly everyone was from taiwan and had glasses. we each had to introduce ourselves and say what school we came from. almost everyone was from a world-renowned school (national taiwan university, india institute of technology) or a california school (berkeley, caltech, stanford, ucsb, us irvine). it was at this time that i realized i was at square one all over again.

we will be reading and reviewing ~4 of the most impacting, novel web-related academic papers per week, and our first week's worth includes one by the google creators. we will eventually create a project and write our own paper. the professor mentioned that once the course is over, many students spend some extra time and actually get their papers published. pretty impressive since the work started as just a class project. more impressive, he told us that some of the papers we will be reading are from former students in this exact class. wow. he casually mentioned that if we need access to a repository of saved web pages, he can give us access to one that ucla gathered. it includes 70 million web pages and is 600 gb. wow.

i had TA seminar (teaches you how to teach and you have to teach the class eventually.) it was very good. i later had cs 201 seminar which just welcomed us to the CS program and was followed w/ a reception. there was free wine, food, and desserts. very good. i met my adviser, who is now the vice chair of the entire cs department. during my introduction:
adviser: chris what?
chris: tanner. t-a-n-n-e-r
adviser: ah yea, you worked at google this summer, right?

wow. apparently his former phd student mentioned me once. he has a very good memory. we talked about my past research work and my current research interests. it was very good. i met many cool ppl, and i am definitely glad i chose ucla. i feel like a true bruin now.

ucla orientation with magnolia coincidences

on a serious note (sorry), starting ucla soon has caused me to recall the past. specifically, i remembered being the typical industrious, overachiever in grade school. i would aim to turn in all assignments first, and i enjoyed memorizing pointless trivia. i felt like an outlier and wondered why everyone else was so slack. in high school, this faded; i became somewhat apathetic towards obtaining great marks, and having fun w/ my friends took higher precedence. in college, i returned to my original roots and re-founded my fascination with learning. throughout this time, i've been fortunate enough to have some amazing internships that surrounded me w/ crazy, smart (and sometimes dynamic) ppl. yet, my undergrad college was still a repeat of the past in that i was surrounded w/ tons of slackers, and that the coursework wasn't renowned. well, after 18 yrs of starting formal education (man, kindergarten was really that long ago), i'm finally entering a rigorous academic environment for which i've longed. watch it be too hard for me, and i start whinning. ha.


anyway, as orientation started, only about 100 of the 1,400 registered new grad students had filed in yet. i immediately spotted a fellow Florida Tech student! what is she doing way out here? we talked, and she started to mention 2 other Florida Tech'ers who got accepted! as she said this, they walked in through the doors. so, oddly, 4 of us out of the ~100 people were from a random, small florida school w/ 2,000 undergrads.

oh, at ucla, parking's a [bleep]. so, i'll be taking the free bus to school each day. i'll occasionally eat a school lunch and probably carry a bland-colored tray. it's like i've regressed to grade school all over again. lol. in fact, i assert that grad school is actually just grade school minus the e.

cheapskate and old people

lately i've felt like a cheapskate by getting some really good deals:

• laser printer (samsung) = $30 (retail = $270)
  
• video card (128mb geforce) = $27 (retail = $35?)
  
• skecher shoes (new) = $35 shipped (retail = $64)
  
• car insurance for 1 year in LA! = $496 (others quoted at $1k)
  

last week in ralph's grocery store, as i entered the checkout line, i witnessed a crazy old white lady fueding w/ an african-american entertainer of some sorts. she claimed to be scared for her life and kept requesting to see the manager, despite the fact that the guy was on the phone and not paying her any attention. he was doing business calls and talked about doing photoshoots up in hollywood. next time i entered the grocery store's checkout, i looked around and saw the same exact crazy woman entering the checkout line w/ me again. (i think she lives there.)

i went to long beach to see brian this weekend, and our adventures included going to an irish pub. we witnessed an 80 yr old man (i'm not exaggerating) in a full suit dancing with the best looking girls in the bar! no joke. we were later explained by various females that he's a pervert who highly frequents the place... he attempts to kiss the girls at the end of each dance and often clings on and attaches himself as he is eye-level with certain female-specific attributes. :-/ pretty pathetic but at least funny to watch.

crazy LA drivers

i dislike it when people stereotype geographical regions as having a certain class of people: "oh, those people drive crazy in that city"; "well, you know how those southerners are"; "oh, you must be from new york." i doubt that people differ drastically, although of course some general, minute differences surely exist everywhere. of these, LA driving seems to be one!

• coming home yesterday, within my 5 mile expressway journey, i saw 2 car wrecks. each time the cars weren't even pulled off to the side of the road, and the scenario was that a car hit another in the rear.
• in the past week, i've almost been hit twice while walking across the street (legally; the AIM Instant Messager signal appeared). the last of which, the driver and i completely stopped and looked at each other... the car was a benz. i know this because the metal logo almost prevented me from ever having children.
• a co-worker has gotten in two accidents in the past month--the last of which a car cut her off on the freeway.

192-car pile up in LA:



my mom recently scanned to me a drawing i did when i was 6:



i drew exactly what i could see during our long van ride... and it epitomizes my family's driving perfectly:
dad: "no no no, we are fine! do you want to drive? i had plenty of time to get over! the car was at least 1 foot away!"

mom replies: "okay, i'll just let you drive! i won't say a thing! ...

(5 seconds later, dad does crazy stunt)

mom: "you need to slow down! how fast you drivin'-- 75 mph?! he's braking!"
cocoa the dog thinks: "where are we going"
chris thinks: "it's going to be a long day!"