you better get up, get out, and get somethin!

that line has been mentioned, mixed, and sampled in many rap songs.

it's really starting to hit me that i only have 7 more weeks here in LA. i'm used to the temporarily lifestyle whereby each year i live in a different residential hall, and every summer i live in a different city for 12 weeks. i've sampled many cities over the last 6 years, and it's just now hitting me that once i move to work full-time, that it's not so easy to just sample a new city. oh crap. heh.

it seems i haven't really done much in LA. i dunno. i guess, realistically, considering my personality and all, i did about as good as i should have expected. i still feel like a visitor in LA. i still feel like a guest. however, i guess i have at least done many of the touristy things: i've seen many beaches, spent a lot of time on 3rd street promenade, did the hollywood stuff (sign, walk of fame, grumann theatre), been to a few comedy clubs, getty museum, and have eaten at a few good places. i've definitely had many many fun times with brian and old friends who have flown to see me. so, now that i think about it, i guess i haven't lived as homely a life as i once though. i've done a good bit in my 1.7 yrs here.

i guess before i came to cali, i envisioned having a huge network of friends and being part of campus, just like things were in florida. i think the mere fact that i'm a grad student really makes that nearly impossible. it's as if each of us 12,000 grad students is just injected within a pool of 28,000 already-connected undergrads. we are outsiders, 50% international, and are being mixed with a social network that is 90% californians--they knew people from high school even! grad students' role on campus is to live within our labs, not to be involved in numerous campus organizations and events. oh, and the fact that i live 5 miles from campus only makes it more difficult.

nevertheless, i still wanted to have built up a personal critique of many LA shops and eateries. my excuses for having not frequented more of these are that (1) i'd have to go alone... which i definitely don't mind doing, but how many restaurants can one really care to eat at alone; (2) money. i've always been saving so that i can immediately pay off my 80k in loans; (3) traffic is horrible

okay, enough w/ the excuses. during my remaining 7 weeks, i'm gonna try to really experience LA while still doing enough work to finish my master's project. oh, and once i graduate, i'm gonna stay for 1 week just to explore here.

this week:

• tues = see examined life, a ucla-produced film
• wed = campus crusades christ at ucla
• thurs = ucla men's bball game against berkeley
• fri = art exhibit at ucla

it's unbelievable how many events take place on-campus each day. as a sample of the registered events, here are friday's events.

do the poll to the right, and i'll leave you with some never-seen-before videos from when i was leaving mit/boston:

the last quarter

as mentioned, this is my last quarter (hopefully). i'm only taking 1 class (computer architectures) and i'm doing my master's project.

computer architectures is horrible. this class has been the death of me throughout my college education: back at FIT, i double-majored in math and cs. by the end of my 4th year, i had completed all of my CS requirements except for 1 class... computer architectures. the class was taught by a joke of a professor, and everyone receives A's in the class. during my 12-week internship after my 4th year, i was getting paid at a rate that is for if i already had a bachelor's. i confessed i didn't have it yet, so my pay dropped A LOT (about 20k in base salary). just because of this joke class!

i return to FIT, only attend the class to take the tests, which were almost identical to the practice tests. i got an A, blah blah, and graduate in 4.5 years total. at least i'm done w/ the class, right? nope.

at UCLA, we have to fulfill a "breadth requirement." it's good, for it's a way of ensuring we have taken core, important undergraduate classes before we are handed a master's. you generally have to take 1 or 2 courses from numerous sections of classes. well, i've taken almost every single course from every single section. yet, when i tried to get credit for computer architecture', nope. no credit because FIT didn't have a syllabus and we didn't use a book. it wasn't sufficient, and i have to retake the class.

so, here i am at UCLA, just like i was at FIT, where i only need 1 class to graduate--computer architecture's. i look around, and the class is filled with really young undergrads. the kid next to me had a calculus book on his desk. a calculus book, seriously?! haha. that was 7 years ago, man. this is just ridiculous.

as for my project, i just got my proposal approved. i'm basically studying the ability for artificial creatures to evolve communication with one another as they learn tactics to survive as a species. so, roughly, i'm making a program that has different species. each species is simply represented by a distinct colored pixel. i program the species w/ very basic sensor-like intelligence, and then i let them run around and mingle. after a while, they get smart and do fancy things. i give them the ability to sense, emit signals, and walk. they learn how to wisely and timely dig, eat, and mate. with this, survival-of-the-fittest happens and they evolve to become pretty complex little dots.

i'm still here

i doubt anyone reads this anymore, especially since i haven't posted in over 3 months. well, i'm going to start posting semi-regularly again.

as for what i've been up to since i left boston this past summer:

• went to indonesia to visit sheley. proposed and had the time of my life
• fall 08 i took 2 grad classes: (1) algorithms (2) animats-based learning
  
• i didn't focus nearly like i should, and i was a pretty crappy student. i got lucky and ended up with an A and A- and my gpa is now decent at 3.8 i still feel like i'm not working even half as hard as i did at FIT though... i guess just the sheer number of classes i took at FIT made it so hard for me
• i've applied to (3) jobs for full-time employment: (1) mit lincoln lab, (2) nasa/caltech jet propulsion lab, and (3) google.
• i flew sheley home from indo for winter break, so we spent 2 weeks together around christmas time! it was great.
• i'm now starting what i hope to be my last quarter at UCLA. i'm only taking 1 course and i'm finishing my master's project, which concerns using genetic algorithms to create a co-evolutionary animats-based environment.

i started this blog soon as i moved out to california. it was to document my time in california, and here we are now with possibly only 10 weeks left. it has seriously flown by fast, and i still don't feel like it's anything remotely close to something i can call home. i'm still a visitor, just one who now understands what LA is like.