|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
March break at Caltech 2003
It was great to return to Tech and to see all of you again! Good luck to the many who will be graduating this year, and who are heading off to great futures in graduate school and work! Hope everyone will continue to have fun at Tech, especially the graduate students (Joyce, Piyush!). Don't work so hard to finish school and research at Tech that you miss out on all the fun experiences that being a student and a Techer is all about!
Now for the photo diary of my trip:Pre-trip: Bogged down by homework, I am up late finishing up assignments before I leave for Tech.
Sun., Mar. 23: Wake up mid-afternoon, realizing that I was lot more tired by travelling that I had expected. For nostalgia, I went to "the Good Earth" restaurant for dinner with Vivek and Neha. Alas, Mike Shulman, Leah, and Deb aren't present - we always used to eat there on weekends. Mmm...ten grain rolls and apple butter. Post-dinner, we return to Tech and meet up with half of Avery house plus a few others: Mona, Basit, Megha, Rumi, Jim, Kaisey, Wingho, Siddarth, Jazib, Rafed, Joyce. Much gameplay ensues - RISK, Mafia - as everyone enjoys themselves before some people leave for Pennsylvania and Hawaii.
Mon., Mar. 24: Piyush, Vivek and myself plan and execute a six-course meal - appetizer (cheese), salad, 3 main courses, and dessert (fruit pie). I must say that I am more impressed each time with Piyush's cooking. If grad school doesn't work out...he can always open a restaurant!
Tues., Mar. 25: I meet up with my friend Joyce, who went to the same high school as me and now is a grad student at Tech! Joyce, I'm sure you'll do well at Caltech, and it's good to see that you already have some good friends there! At night, I watch "Hollywood / Bollywood" with Rumi, Megha, and Vivek. Great movie! And set in Toronto too! It was cool being able to identify where a lot of the scenes were filmed...including a fleeting shot of transmission lines near the airport! (For those who really want to know: there are a series of high-voltage power lines that circle Toronto, linking the city to the Pickering Nuclear Station in the east, and the Niagara Falls generating station to the southwest.) Ok, so I could have picked far more interesting parts of "Hollywood / Bollywood" to remember, but I didn't want to spoil it for people who haven't seen the movie yet!
Wed., Mar. 26: I meet up with Den and his roommate (yes indeed, I am bad at remembering names), and we go to Sam Woo for lunch. It's been far too long since I've had good Chinese food (ie. not since I was back in Toronto for Christmas). Den and I hatch a plan to have a hot pot dinner (see thursday). But for dinner tonight, it is Rafed and Megha's turn to cook - very tasty!
Thurs., Mar. 27: I attend the Scherer lab group (my old research group) meeting. Somehow I had conscripted as the guest speaker for the day, so I ended up talking for about 20 minutes on my current research with the Westervelt group. It actually went well - I was fairly convincing with all the slides that Ania and Kathy (Westerveltians) had prepared for the APS March meeting. In afternoon, Den and I went to Ranch99 and bought a lot of meat, fish, and vegetables for a hot pot dinner with the Lloydies. In attendance were Denny, Jihoon, JR, Euan, Weiyi, Den and myself. It was a big success...but then again hot pot dinners rarely fail to satisfy! And after dinner...what better to do than to play a game of spades? Post-spades, Denny, Euan, Jihoon and I chat for a while about all sorts of random things. It is good to be a returning graduate, so you can come back and tell everyone all the things you wished you knew while you were at Tech!
Fri., Mar. 28: I have lunch with Sidharth at President Thai, though the real story is in our mode of transportation for getting there and back - we rode his scooter! I have to admit it was a lot of fun - speed thrills! - though I still prefer human-powered two-wheeled vehicles to those with the noise and bulkiness of motors. Joyce and I met up again for dinner at Hamburger Hamlet - a good chance to swap stories about old friends, current school concerns, and future career paths and choices. I'll try to keep in mind Joyce's favourite admonition to me: don't study too hard, Ben!
Sat., Mar. 29: I was sad to leave Caltech again. I guess that's altogether too easy for a graduate to say, since I don't have to worry anymore about finishing Tech. But it's still true that I miss the place and the people. Heh...I'm sure you'll all feel the same, once you are done and graduated!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
